George Simonds Boulger

"During the last few weeks , , and myself have been exploring an ossiferous at Shandon, near , under a grant from the . Bones of , , bear, wolf, horse, and hare, were found in the débris of a here in 1859, and are now in the . We have worked through a considerable quantity of and , in which and in a thin underlying deposit of cave-earth we have found numerous bones of the above-mentioned animals, indicating at least two individuals of mammoth, eighteen of reindeer, and five of horse, for which latter this is as yet the sole recorded locality in Ireland. The bones of bear show extreme age and signs of disease, and we have found the cast antler of a reindeer. Some of the bones have been gnawed, probably by wolves, and many have been broken by the falling-in of the roof of the cave. Though we have broken into a large chamber, we are as yet unable to form a clear conception of the original form of the cavern. A full account of the cave previous to the present exploration was given by in the ' for June, 1870."

"The s are stated to have burnt their human sacrifices in cages; and, though we cannot with equal confidence vouch for the antiquity of that other more harmless use of the Willow, the making of s to be wielded at , or on any other English greensward, even if we forget altogether its many uses in manufactures, we can find many points of interest in the Willows group. It may as well, however, be mentioned here that the wood, especially that of the , is made into paper pulp, besides affording the best charcoal for artists' crayons; whilst, not to mention the undoubted value of the bark for purposes, it is now well known in the medical world as the source of ."

"Our old-established {[w|Botanical garden|Botanical Gardens}} have long carefully collected those species that have been used in medicine. The , founded by the in 1632, was the first. In 1690 the were placed by under the charge of the botanist (1642-1706), who sent collectors abroad; and about the same date presents the , afterwards rendered famous by the encyclopedic works of (1691-1771), to the . In 1760 the was established by the , under the advice of (1713-1792). who was an enthusiastic botanist ..."

"Wood does not occur in any plants of a lower grade than ferns; and in the higher plants in which it does occur it is chiefly, but not exclusively, in the stem. The main physiological function of wood is the as it grows erect and branches. Submerged s, buoyed up, as they are, by the water, do not form wood in their stems, nor, as a rule, do s, nor, at first, the succulent, flexible shoots of longer-lived plants. In , and in allied plants, the wood, though dense, consists largely of scattered longitudinal strands and often of cells of no great vertical length. Though there are also generally woody layers just below the surface of the stem, giving it considerable strength as a whole, the structure renders s useless as . For all practical purposes, therefore, wood is produced only by the highest sub-kingdom of the plant world, the seed-bearing or flowering plants, the or Phanerogámia of botanists."

"There is, in fact, thirteen times more land north of the than there is to the south of it. This alone must obviously have a profound influence on —the vast ocean area being almost exclusively represented so far as plant life is concerned, by and ; so far few s, such as the Grass-wracks (), inhabiting salt water."