DUBLIN NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
175 
DUBLIN NATUEAL HISTOBY SOCIETY. 
FRIDAY EVENING, MARCH 5, 1858. 
E. Callwell, Esq., M. E. I. A., in the Chair. 
The previous Minutes having been read and confirmed,— 
Professor Haughton exhibited specimens of Lepidomelane from the 
county of Donegal. 
Professor Kinahan, M. D., read the following— 
ONATHE DISTRIBUTION OE FERNS IN IRELAND, WITH A LIST OF SOME OF THE 
MORE REMARKABLE LOCALITIES IN WHICH THEY OCCUR. 
During the many years which have elapsed since the publication of 
Mackay’s “Flora Hibernica,” the ferns have received so much attention 
in the British Isles, and as a natural consequence the list of them has been 
so much increased by the discovery of unrecorded species, and the iden¬ 
tification and discrimination of others, as to render the list of them given 
in that valuable book necessarily imperfect, and of comparatively little 
use to the student Having been engaged, since 1848, myself, in their 
study, and had opportunities of collecting in almost every quarter 
of the island; and also having had, through the kindness of friends 
in England, opportunities of examining in a living state, authenticated 
specimens of all the disputed or critical species, I propose to print a 
list of the more important localities in which the several species have 
occurred. 
To enumerate all the localities in which common ferns occur would 
swell the list to an inconvenient size. To such species as are of general 
occurrence, and equally abundant in suitable stations, the simple remark, 
“general,” is appended; fuller details being given in the case of such 
species, ashy their markedly special distribution, or peculiarity of growth 
in certain localities, seem to be of geologic value; the word ‘ geologic’ 
here, and generally throughout this paper, being used, not in the con¬ 
fined sense of the class or character of rock or soil, on which the plants 
are found, but rather in the more extended and general sense—of distri¬ 
bution from a geologic centre of creation. 
The districts examined by me are— 
Eor the North, the counties of Tyrone, Fermanagh, Monaghan, and 
Armagh. 
For the "West and South-west, Galway, King’s County, Clare, 
Westmeath, Queen’s County, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Limerick, Kerry, 
Cork, and Waterford. 
For the East and South-east, Louth, Meath, Dublin, Kildare, Car- 
low, Wicklow, Wexford, and Cavan. 
