Caleb Threlkeld’s Synopsis stirpium Hibernicarum (1726), the earliest Irish flora.
‘During the Summer Months I used to perambulate in Company of ingenious Men, both of the Clergy and Laity, to have ocular Demonstration of the Plants themselves in their native Soil, where Nature regaled our Senses with her Gaiety and Garnishes, which makes some resemblance of the paradisiacal State. From twelve Years Observations I collected Specimens for an Hortus Siccus, and set down Places where they grew, besides I made Inquiries of Ingenious Men, and now I have reduced our Plants into the Model you here see.’
An Irish Herbal
Following the appearance in 1525 of Bancks’ Herbal,45 the first printed herbal in English, named after the printer Richard Bancks, there was a succession of other herbals acting as vehicles for botanical information. But the herbalist’s era came to an end in 1735 when Linnaeus published Systema Naturae, the book that ushered in modern botany.46 The very same year, Ireland’s first herbal Botanalogia Universalis Hibernica by John K’Eogh (1681?–1754) was published in the city of Cork.47 Probably born in Co. Roscommon, K’Eogh was appointed Chaplain to James King, fourth Lord Kingston, and later obtained the living of Mitchelstown, Co. Cork. K’Eogh’s reason for writing the herbal was the daily viewing of his master’s gardens in which grew nearly 200 different species of herbs and trees. ‘I was not acquainted with any Garden, which could show so many, this was no small advantage, or Conveniency to forward this Undertaking.’ However, K’Eogh’s vision extended beyond the garden walls and comments on Irish localities and habitats of some of the listed plants are included in the herbal. A similar treatise followed in 1739 – Zoologia Medicinalis Hibernica – on the medicinal properties of animals.48 In his preface, K’Eogh stated ‘My principal intention in publishing these treatises on vegetables and animals, was to contrive to cure all the diseases, which the natives of kingdom are afflicted with, by simple, easy, and safe methods, prepared either by pulverisation, decoction, infusion, distillation, etc.’. The frequent eating of the brains of sparrows ‘excite venery and clear the sight’. Powered otter testicles drunk in a liquid ‘help to cure the Epilepsy’; the fat of a heron, mixed with oil of amber, ‘being dropt warm into the ears, cures deafness’. K’Eogh acknowledges his debit to Horace (65 BC–AD 8), Pliny (d. AD 79), Avicenna (980–1037) Albertus Magnus (c.1280) and others for the preparation of the listed prescriptions. Unfortunately no natural history information is included along with the animals listed in the Zoologia.
Keogh’s Botanalogia Universalis Hibernica (1735) – a late herbal.
County natural histories and botanical works
The year 1744 marked the formation of the Physico-Historical Society of Ireland, some 13 years after the founding of the Dublin Society (later Royal Dublin Society). The learned gentlemen of the PHSI decided to prepare a series of monographs on the ‘ancient and present state’ of the counties. These contained lists of plants and often animals, essays on agriculture and descriptions of minerals, woodlands, etc. They can be considered harbingers of the county natural histories that blossomed in the later half of the nineteenth century.
John Rutty’s (1697–1775) An Essay Towards a Natural History of the County Dublin, published in 1772, was the first real county natural history in Ireland and dealt extensively with the flora, fauna, geology, meteorology, agriculture, water, minerals, air and soils of Dublin as well as the mortality of Dubliners.49 He ignored the Linnean system of binomial classification which was in the process of being widely adopted in England. Under international agreement the year 1758 was taken as the start date of this new nomenclature – first unveiled by Linnaeus in Species Plantarum in 1753 – whereby each species of plant or animal is described by two, sometimes three, Latin names. The Linnean system simplified matters. Thus Rutty’s long-winded scientific name for water mint – Mentha rotundifolia palustris seu aquatica major – would simply have been Mentha aquatica under the Linnean system. The binomial system meant that space was saved on paper at a time when printing costs were prohibitively high, and that names were easier to remember. Moreover, it provided a strong logical framework for all future advancement in the study of biology.
Soon after the adoption of the Linnean system some interesting early botanical investigations were undertaken by Patrick Browne (1720–90), from Woodstock, Co. Mayo, who attended Leyden University and became friendly with Linnaeus. He settled in Jamaica, practised as a medical doctor, and wrote The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica.50 His important manuscript, Fasciculus Plantarum Hiberniae, containing records of his botanical findings during 1788, made principally in Mayo (although he also investigated Co. Galway), lay dormant for about two centuries in the cupboards of the Linnean Society, London, before being published in 1996 as The Flowers of Mayo together with a commentary and extensive notes by Nelson and illustrations by Walsh.51 Browne also published important catalogues of the birds and fishes of Ireland in the Gentleman’s and London Magazine in 1774.52,53
Despite the advent of regional natural histories, Ireland still lagged behind in scientific matters. Progress was, of course, impeded by a lack of wealth, a poor institutional infrastructure, and often hazardous and difficult travel through the countryside. But towards the close of the century things were warming up in Dublin. One driving force behind the foundation of the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, in 1795 was Walter Wade (fl.1770?–1825) who, a year earlier, had published Catalogus Systematicus Plantarum Indigenarum in Comitatu Dublinensi Inventarum. Pars Prima – a flora of Co. Dublin, the first Irish flora to be arranged according to the Linnean classification.54 Wade insisted on personally viewing each species before listing it. He also wrote several other texts including one on rare plants in Co. Galway, with a particular emphasis on Connemara, and he claimed to be the first serious visiting botanist there. His subsequent Plantae Rariores in Hibernia Inventae (1804) was a more ambitious cataloguing of flowering plants, including 55 new additions to his Dublin flora.55 Interest was now spreading beyond flowering plants, a point highlighted by the appearance in 1804 of Dawson Turner’s (1775–1858) Muscologiae Hibernicae Spicilegium,56 entirely devoted to the mosses of Ireland, all of which had either been seen by him growing in situ or had been sent to him by Irish correspondents including John Templeton from Cranmore, near Belfast, one of Ireland’s outstanding naturalists.
The now flourishing Royal Dublin Society was encouraging economic development of the country through agricultural improvement. Naturalists and scientists rose to the occasion. John White (d. before 1845), one of the gardeners to the Society, published An Essay on the Indigenous Grasses of Ireland in 1808.57 Wade came forward with Sketch of Lectures on Meadow and Pasture Grasses,58 which he delivered in Glasnevin at the beginning of the nineteenth century. William Richardson (1740–1820), rector of Moy and Clonfeacle, Co. Antrim, and a writer on geology and agriculture, engaged in a vigorous and eccentric campaign to promote creeping bent grass and brought out a Memoir on Fiorin Grass, published in 1808 as a Select Paper of the Belfast Literary Society. Another utilitarian natural history contribution was Wade’s most substantial book: Salices or an Essay towards a General History of Sallows, Willows & Osiers, their Uses and Best Methods of Propagating and Cultivating Them (1811).59
The scientific study of botany came of age before that