Ireland,
A Smithsonian Natural History
By Michael Viney
Blackstaff Press
ISBN 0 85640 744 5
336pp £20.00 hb
Paul
Clements
In
recent years there has been a glut of natural history books about
Ireland. There appears to be an endless fascination amongst publishers
for studies of the natural world and its geological past. In 1999
Harper Collins brought out David Cabot’s comprehensive book
Ireland, A Natural History in the New Naturalist series.
Two years previously Lilliput Press published Nature in Ireland:
A Scientific and Cultural History, an anthology edited by John
Wilson Foster. Numerous other books in the past ten years have delved
into every aspect of wildlife and the landscape from the Wexford
slobs to the Shannon floodlands, and from Strangford Lough to Cape
Clear Island.
Just
when you thought the market was as saturated as a Connemara bog
in winter, along comes an ambitious new offering from the Blackstaff
Press in association with the distinguished Smithsonian Institution
in Washington. Ireland, A Smithsonian Natural History, by
the columnist and natural history writer Michael Viney, is the newest
addition to this ever-expanding mountain of books. As someone who
has lived for the past twenty-five years on a windswept and remote
Mayo hillside chronicling the rhythms of nature, Viney knows the
terrain intimately.
Since
1977 he has contributed a weekly column to the Irish Times,
‘Another Life’ (memorably labelled “marvellous communiques
from the west” by Michael Longley). In his column he looks
at different aspects of natural history, often considering environmental,
conservation and ecological issues. His adjoining ‘Eye on Nature’
answers queries from readers on subjects as diverse as why caterpillars
have black blotches, the feeding habits of woodlice, or the reasons
why ravens flock in large numbers in the autumn.
The
opening chapter of his book explains the flourishing of interest
in natural history in the Victorian era with the field clubs booming
through the 1880s and 1890s. The gentlemen and women botanists from
Belfast and Dublin loved regular excursions in search of butterflies,
ferns and sea-shells. Viney writes of the significance of the Clare
Island Survey of 1909-1911 in analysing change in an ocean environment;
an analysis, he notes, now becoming crucial in monitoring the unpredictable
progress of global warming. He then transports us on a journey back
in time with a series of biological and geological history lessons.
He discusses possible land bridges between Ireland and Britain,
and looks at climate change and the way the weather has a place
in the human shaping of the island. Other chapters sweep across
archaeology, agriculture and aquaculture, land ownership, the seashore,
islands, estuaries, and the woodland heritage.
Trodden
Much
of the ground covered is already well trodden by previous writers
but one of Viney’s strengths lies in his detailed knowledge
of the country and in juxtaposing the views of other writers on
nature and science. Hardly a page goes by without a citation or
telling quotation from some of the illustrious names of the Irish
natural history and topographical writing dynasty: Robert Lloyd
Praeger, Henry Chichester Hart, Frank Mitchell, David Webb and Estyn
Evans - as well as present day practitioners of the craft - including
Tim Robinson, David Cabot and Charles Nelson. All are to be found
within the covers of this book. The author weaves in appropriate
comments covering archaeology, topography, geology and ornithology,
and concludes each chapter with a valuable reading list.
Viney’s
own vade-mecum is unquestionably Praeger’s classic work on
Ireland The Way That I Went. Written in 1937, it is the story
of a lifetime spent exploring the mountains, bogs, caves, lakes,
rivers and islands of the country. Praeger was primarily a botanist
but he was also an archaeologist and geologist and had an avid curiosity
about the countryside. His holistic and ecological view of nature
appeals to Viney and he invokes his literary work more than any
other writer.
The text is replete with anecdotes and intriguing observations.
Snippets of information pour from Viney’s pen. We hear, for
example, of Maude Jane Delap from Valencia Island who was the seventh
of ten children of a Church of Ireland rector. She became a marine
biologist rearing generations of jellyfish in bubbling bell jars
in the rectory. She made genuine discoveries and a sea anemone (Edwardsia
delapiae) was named after her. He tells us of a formidable body
of women in the First World War, the Society of United Irishwomen,
which formed units to collect sphagnum for wound dressings as it
was more absorbent and effective than cotton wool.
Inventory
In
the chapter entitled, ‘The Brown Mantle’ he supplies a
fascinating descriptive inventory of the animals of peatland. As
well as bird life, his list includes frogs, beetles, mites, aquatic
spiders, dragonflies and damselflies, moths, butterflies, marsh
grasshoppers, viviparous lizards, the smooth newt - and biting midges
- with the reassurance that ‘of Ireland’s thirty biting
midges, only four are a torment to people.’
Not
surprisingly, the author is particularly strong on his home patch
of Mayo. The fields, beaches, mountains, and undoubtedly midges,
he knows best are those on his doorstep where he has made rich discoveries
over the years. But one of the best chapters is on the Burren in
County Clare, a region south of Viney’s territory.
Burren
‘The
Magic of Limestone Country’ delves into the mystery and ecological
conundrum that is the Burren. Whether searching out turloughs (vanishing
lakes) or exploring the area’s unique cave system he is always
aware of his surroundings. He is an amiable companion as he quarters
the limestone pavement of this botanical holy ground and guides
us knowledgeably through the “floral excitement” where
he describes the annual orchid parade as a “spectacular celebration
of chance”. Viney doesn’t romanticise Ireland and his
passion is often neatly understated:
“Limestone
is a rock of considerable character, transformed by the fall of
light or the flow of water. Whether as the matrix of ancient fossils,
the armature of mystical hills, or the cradle of dazzling wildflowers,
it makes memorable landscapes of the Burren and the Aran Islands.”
He
writes in a style largely free of opinion and any personal likes
or dislikes. His methodology is straightforward and the information
is presented in an accessible and engaging style with the Latin
nomenclature accompanying the English names for plants and animals.
Occasionally he lapses into the technical lingua franca which has
the reader reaching for the dictionary to find the meaning of words
such as xerophilous, mycorrhizal, chitinous or tyrphobionts; he
does though helpfully explain the difference between epizoochory
(seed transport by adhesion to people or animals) and endozoochory
(seedlings germinated from a cow pat).
This
book is best savoured slowly and dipped into at a leisurely pace
- otherwise the casual reader may become overwhelmed. It is a fact-driven
cornucopia with a staggering amount of data and detail. Some remarkable
facts and figures are produced and delivered with exactitude. Consider
a few plucked out as randomly as the plummeting 130 foot dive for
fish by a gannet (of which there are 26,580 pairs on Little Skellig):
the coast of south Connemara has 336 recorded species of seaweed,
a dozen more than the US North Atlantic coast; there are seventy-three
kinds of sea slug in Lough Hyne near Skibbereen; the royal fern
- the tallest fern in Ireland - rarely grows above 164 feet, except
in the Macgillicuddy’s Reeks where it climbs to 984 feet.
Birdlife
When
it comes to describing bird life, Viney has a sharp eye and ear
for detail: “The sweeping aerial ballets of great flocks of
lapwing and golden plover are among the most affecting pleasures
of Ireland’s winter birding”, he writes.
“To
stand at the edge of the [Shannon] callows at twilight in early
summer is to hear the strange aerial “drumming” of displaying
snipe from many points in the sky”.
Or:
“The bugling calls of the Greenland white-fronted geese are
among the most stirring of Ireland’s wild sounds.”
With a controlled and restrained pen, he takes the ecologist’s
view quietly expressing his concerns. The development of dune systems
as golf courses, chiefly for promoting Irish tourism, is in his
opinion “unremitting”. By the end of the twentieth century
there were fewer than ten intact dune systems remaining of the 190
originally existing along the island’s 466 miles of sandy coast.
But
there is humour in his writing too. The small things in nature excite
Viney. Seeing two rare violet-blue sea-snails on the beach beside
his home at Thallabawn “at once made up for never winning the
lottery.” The illustrations are particularly well chosen and
evocative. Atmospheric black and white photographs, featuring storm
washed islands of the west coast and fishermen’s currachs on
Caher Island, all help capture the mood. A glossy sixteen-page colour
photographic inset will leave you drooling and grabbing your binoculars.
Ireland,
A Smithsonsian Natural History is a work of scholarship, but
it is an unsettling book: unsettling because after reading it, a
restlessness is guaranteed to come over you and you will want to
follow in the author’s footsteps and drive straight to the
Burren to seek out the mountain avens, spring gentians, or early
purple orchids. Alternatively, you may hear the call of the Skellig
islands, decide to visit the Shannon callows, climb Mweelrea mountain,
or want to walk the CÈide Fields in Viney’s beloved
and adopted County of Mayo.
Scrupulously
edited and proof-read, this book is an authoritative celebration
of outdoors Ireland. Michael Viney is a well-informed connoisseur
of nature, living, in his own closing words, a life of “almost
eccentric privilege”. For a quarter of a century - week in,
week out - he has kept a gimlet eye on wildlife and has eloquently
entertained, enlightened and educated his readers. His vast wealth
of knowledge has now been translated into an all-encompassing work
that carries on in the Praeger tradition of passionate inquiry into
everything in the landscape as well as twenty-first century ecological
issues. As Viney points out, we are all stakeholders in the countryside.
This stimulating volume will raise awareness of our precious stake
in the fragile natural world around us and make us think a little
more about the changes taking place.
P
r e v i e w
Issue 420
Oh
Mercy! Is this the future? I read somewhere recently that Irish language
publishers rarely exceed 600 copies of any print run when launching
a new book. Of these, some 400 are sold, which perhaps illustrates
the true state of the language more than all the propaganda that
was ever produced by its exploiters.
by Sean Kearney
Confessions
of a Relapsed Catholic God, or my imagination of God (I`m still
not sure which), started to play a major, if ultimately inconsequential
role in my life in the months after Ollie died. After cursing Him
as a bastard I asked Him for forgiveness and made the transformation
from lapsed to relapsed Catholic.
by Simon Delaney
The
Place Where the Islands Meet I hold an Irish passport, but do not speak
Irish nor have I voted in an Irish election since the late1980s
when I moved to London. My family name ‘Barry’ originally
comes from Wales. I speak English and have lived and worked in the
United Kingdom for most of my adult life, voted in United Kingdom
elections, but do not hold a British passport I studied and lived
in Scotland for three years, and it was in Glasgow that I first
got involved in Green Politics. I now live and work here in Northern
Ireland where I feel more at home than my native Dublin where I
was born. Politically I am a Green, yet despite my accent and pride
in being Irish, I am not an Irish Nationalist.
by John Barry
Our precious stake
in a fragile world In recent years there has been a glut of
natural history books about Ireland. There appears to be an endless
fascination amongst publishers for studies of the natural world
and its geological past. by Paul Clements
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