The impending Second World War had the effect of dampening down the growth of interest in natural history in Ireland although the country was not engaged in hostilities. One vitally important project fell as an unfortunate victim of this period of astringency. It was Praeger’s Natural History of Ireland: a Sketch of its Flora and Fauna, written in 1944 when Praeger was aged 79.120 The War and consequent delays prevented the book’s publication until 1950 by which time its format, style and much of the information it contained was ‘dated’. Echoes of long species lists with little interpretation or analysis, as was customary in earlier works, reverberated throughout the book. In fact, Praeger admitted in his preface that only a limited amount of emendation to the 1944 text had been possible prior to its publication. The book also suffered greatly from the absence of any illustrations apart from three stark graphs.
In the early 1950s Kennedy teamed up with Robert Francis Ruttledge (b.1899) and Charles F. Scroope (1876–1975) with assistance from George Rayner Humphreys (1886–1980) to produce The Birds of Ireland (1954), an updated version of Ussher and Warren’s 1900 exemplar.121 Each of the three primary authors undertook to write the entry for the species or group of species with which they were most familiar. They were helped by an extensive network of correspondents who diligently sent in information from the fastnesses of estate walls, rectories, or retiring cottages, for traditionally the amateur study of birds was favoured by the Protestant fringe of the population – something no longer true. The 1954 vintage of The Birds of Ireland maintained the high standards set in 1900. It was the third in a series of major national ornithological works, each appearing at almost 50 year intervals since 1850. When is the fourth due to hatch? Ruttledge’s Ireland’s Birds appeared in 1966 and was a somewhat abbreviated work, drawing heavily upon the many discoveries and observations made by an enthusiastic band of bird watchers during the late 1950s and early 1960s.122 Clive Hutchinson’s (1949–98) Birds in Ireland (1989) is a more comprehensive and satisfactory work, approximating the style, detail and grandness expected of an enduring national work.123
David Allardice Webb (1912–95), the doyen of modern Irish botanists, first published An Irish Flora in 1943 (now in its seventh revised edition 1996),124 a small and innocuous-looking volume but full of plant identification tips as well as notes on the habitats and distribution of all Irish species, written in the author’s characteristic taut style. Webb was an outstanding field botanist as well as a brilliant conversationalist.
John J. Moore was the doyen of the Irish school of plant sociologists following the vegetation description methods of Braun-Blanquet. He was also a champion of the conservation of Ireland’s vanishing peatlands, as well as an inspired field worker. Both Moore and Webb represented the finest scientific traditions of the two main cultural strands of Ireland.
Integrated ecological studies of a region are now generally de rigueur, making it difficult for the more traditional floras to survive. However, the past 18 years have seen the publication of The Flora of County Carlow (1979) by Booth (1897–1988) assisted by Scannell;125 Flora of Connemara and the Burren (1983) by Webb & Scannell;126 The Flora of Inner Dublin (1984) by Wyse-Jackson & Sheehy-Skeffington;127 Flora of Lough Neagh (1986) by Harron128 and Synnott’s slim but valuable volume County Louth Wildflowers (1970).129
One of the greatest polymath naturalists of this century was Frank Mitchell (1912–98). Equipped with a brilliant and creative mind, he was primarily a geologist who branched off into many different fields of natural history. The Chair of Quaternary Studies in Trinity College was especially created to both honour him and capture his talents for the University. His early work on the vegetation history of Ireland was inspired by the Dane Knud Jessen, whom he assisted on Jessen’s first Irish visit in 1934. Mitchell’s many talents culminated in his remarkable book The Irish Landscape (1986)130 which was recently republished for the third time as Reading the Irish Landscape (1997)22 with the archaeologist Michael Ryan as co-author. The critic and writer Eileen Battersby summed up the book as ‘an extraordinary achievement in that this essentially geologically-based text offers a multifaceted and complete view of Ireland. It is a feat no other single narrative has matched.’131
Birds of Ireland maintained the high standard set by its predecessor of 1900 and drew upon the combined experience of the four best field ornithologists of the time.
The past 25 years have witnessed a remarkable upsurge in both professional and amateur natural history activity in Ireland. The literature generated by this new generation of naturalists has become increasingly sophisticated, and natural historians, once objects of some curiosity and derision, have at last achieved their just recognition in a rapidly evolving Irish society.13,20,51,123,126,132–142
Approximately two million years ago, severe cold conditions developed in northwestern Europe marking the onset of the Pleistocene or Ice Age. At the height of this period, ice sheets smothered Ireland and much of the European Continent, eliminating plants and animals that had evolved throughout the preceding era. When the ice relented it gave way to alternating cycles of warmth and cold spread over the last 750,000 years. The effects were profound. The development of flora and fauna was periodically encouraged only to be inhibited and largely eliminated later, with the result that the plants and animals found in Ireland today are the outcome of a most complex and not fully understood sequence of survival and migration, driven by the climatic oscillations of the Pleistocene.
It was only some 13,000 years ago, at the close of the Ice Age, that the cold began to lift, allowing a progressive development of vegetation and fauna which has continued through to the present day. The activities of the Neolithic farmers commencing some 6,000 years ago inaugurated the first anthropogenic modifications of Ireland’s biotic inheritance. Woodland clearance, initiated by those farmers, brought about many long-term ecological changes including the elimination of some species, redistribution of others and the introduction of alien flora and fauna. This chapter will explore the history and sequencing of Ireland’s vegetational history while detailing what is known about the origins of Ireland’s mammalian fauna and, in particular, highlighting the history of red and sika deer and the wolf. The pedigree of the frog and natterjack toad in Ireland, subject to much speculation, will be explored, along with the history of Ireland’s freshwater fish. Finally the many unresolved questions concerning the origin of some Lusitanian or Mediterranean–Atlantic flora will be considered, as well as the curious geographical distribution of certain plant species, especially in parts of western Ireland.
The Pleistocene or Ice Age
The latter part of the Ice Age, from about 750,000 years ago, has been characterised by a series of alternating warm phases – known as ‘interstadial’ if minor and without the development of closed woodland and ‘interglacial’ when full woodland cover developed – followed by colder phases. The interglacials and interstadials are thought to have been relatively short, in the order of 10,000–15,000 years, with temperatures close to today’s levels which allowed a rich flora to emerge before it was expunged by the next cold phase. The vegetation which developed during these warm periods was generally similar to that found in other parts of Europe, although the record from Ireland is far from complete.1 The cold periods were longer in duration, lasting some 50,000–100,000 years, and ushered in arctic and tundra floras. During the most severe conditions the landscape