2. WATERFORD AND EAST CORK.—This is a picturesque district, formed largely of slates and sandstones of Old Red Sandstone age. The coast is mostly of very bold character, with towering cliff ranges. The country is generally undulating and fertile, with occasional mountain ranges, of which the Comeraghs are rendered especially interesting and picturesque by the deep "cooms," embosoming tarns, which give them their name. The Comeraghs and the lovely valley of the Blackwater furnish particularly attractive ground for the naturalist. The flora and fauna of this area are intermediate in character between that of the district last considered and of the surpassingly interesting country that lies to the westward, and which will next claim attention. Thus, the coasts yield several of the rare plants mentioned in the last paragraph—for instance, Diotis and Asparagus grow at Tramore; while at the same time we first meet in this area with some of the most famous plants of the south-west—London Pride (Saxifraga umbrosa), Kidney-leaved Saxifrage (S. Geum), Great Butterwort (Pinguicula grandiflora), Irish Spurge (Euphorbia hiberna). Two rare butterflies of this district are Dianthæcia cæsia and D. luteago var. Barrettii; and the largest of the British leaf-beetles, Timarcha lævigata, has been taken near Waterford, and at Tipperary.
Drawing J. St. J. Phillips.
Geological Section from Bantry Bay to Killarney.
Photo—Welch, Belfast.
A Kerry ditchbank showing Pennywort two feet in height.
3. WEST CORK AND KERRY.—This is one of the most beautiful and interesting districts in the British Isles, and indeed in Europe. The ancient Devonian rocks which prevail have been folded into a grand series of simple arches and troughs, the axes running north-east and south-west. The arches form noble mountain ranges, which on the coast project far into the Atlantic in a series of grand promontories, and inland form picturesque highlands, of which Macgillicuddy's Reeks, which rise to 3,404, constitute the highest land in Ireland. The valleys in their lower portions are occupied by the sea, in the form of long island-studded fiords; their upper parts are often filled with Carboniferous limestone, and offer a pleasant contrast of tillage and green pasture between the gaunt brown mountain-ribs. Here we stand on the most western outpost of the European Continent, with the Atlantic on three sides. The effect of the encompassing ocean, and the western winds which constantly blow in from it, is to produce here and along the whole western coast the most uniform annual temperature to be found in Europe. Frosts are almost unknown, and great heat and drought likewise. These peculiar climatic conditions have resulted in the acquisition and preservation of a fauna and flora which spread here from more southern latitudes at some time now long gone by, and which in these favoured spots still remain to remind us of a period when a state of things prevailed very different from what obtains at present. For naturalists tell us that there can be no doubt that these southern plants and animals migrated to Ireland over land-surfaces now destroyed, having spread along the old-time coast line which long ago extended from the Pyrenean highlands to Ireland; and as a relic of their march, we find some of the species still surviving in the south-west of England, while all of them are absent from the rest of England and from the adjoining parts of continental Europe.
An enumeration of a few of the most remarkable of the plants, with a definition of their range, will make clearer this peculiar feature of the natural history of the West of Ireland:—
