fishing and writing than administering his parishes. The stories of his adventures and encounters with eagles, otters, seals, grouse and wild geese make Wild Sports of the West, with Legendary Tales and Local Sketches (1832) a vivid read.80 It is an obligatory text, written along semi-fictional lines with many ‘ripping’ yarns which tell a lot about western Ireland, its wildlife and local lore during the early nineteenth century. His capability as a lively raconteur and his easy social manner gave him access to and accommodation with the British garrison in Castlebar, Co. Mayo, whenever he wanted it: ‘Maxwell introduced the officers to capital shooting, dined at their mess; and while draining their decanters drained their memories of those stirring recollections which he turned to account in Stories of Waterloo.’81 In between his fishing, hunting, drinking and socialising, Maxwell mustered enough energy to write 20 books. His ambition in Wild Sports was to ‘record the wild features and wilder associations of that romantic and untouched country’ – a goal he certainly honoured. Amongst his numerous observations, he recorded some of the last indigenous red deer of Mayo which were persecuted almost to extinction during his time with the aid of muskets abandoned by the French in 1798. He lost his ‘living’ of Balla in 1844 through absenteeism which, combined with a self-indulgent lifestyle and increasing debts, forced him into exile in Scotland where, as an alcoholic, he died of broken health aged 58.
In contrast to the wild Maxwell, naturalists in Northern Ireland were a more sedate and collected lot, reflecting a society steeped in Protestant ethics and moral sternness. However, Northern Ireland was about to experience a period of great excitement and ebullience: the golden age of natural history, dominated by the zoologist William Thompson, was just behind the door.
Born into one of the famous Belfast families of linen-makers, Thompson (1805–52) devoted his life to zoology, spurning the loom and the spinning jenny. Thompson’s magnum opus was The Natural History of Ireland.9 The first three volumes were on birds and were published in 1849, 1850 and 1851, before his untimely death in 1852, aged 47. He had intended to produce several more volumes to include all the remaining fauna, but only left a very incomplete manuscript. In accordance with Thompson’s will it fell upon Robert Patterson (1802–72), another eminent Belfast naturalist from a mill furnishing family, and James R. Garrett (1818–55), a Belfast solicitor and keen naturalist, to edit and publish this manuscript, which came out as a fourth variegated volume in 1856. Garrett was responsible for the mammals, fish and reptiles while Patterson handled all other groups. The production of the work must have been fated, for Garrett died before the book was printed. The information contained in the first three bird volumes is of such high standard – due to the accuracy of Thompson’s observations and those of a network of correspondents – that it is still interesting and valuable today.
One of the greatest tragedies of Irish natural history was the premature death of Belfast naturalist William Thompson aged 47.
While Thompson had been labouring away on his bird volumes he realised the need for a much smaller and inexpensive book for the general reader. The necessity was met by The Natural History of the Birds of Ireland (1853)82, written by his friend John Watters (fl. 1850s). A small, almost whimsical, Victorian production, laced with occasional romantic poems, it also contains hard facts on the habits, migrations and occurrences of the 261 listed species – a good antidote to Thompson’s weighty tomes.
Another fine zoologist from Northern Ireland, considered to be one of Europe’s greatest entomologists, was Alexander Henry Haliday (1806–70), a contemporary and friend of Thompson.83 A graduate in law, he never practised and managed the family’s estates in Co. Down, but he was more interested in entomology. He was highly cultured and an able linguist, a facility that allowed fruitful intercourse with continental entomologists. He published 75 entomological papers, including descriptions of several species new to science. He also contributed to Curtis’s British Entomology (1827–40) and other books.83
The Patterson family of Belfast were another force in the study of natural history. The first Robert Patterson (1802–72) was an accomplished naturalist who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of this services to zoology. He authored the offbeat Letters on the Natural History of Insects Mentioned in Shakespeare’s Plays with Incidental Notes on the Insects of Ireland (1838), as well as several more traditional books including Introduction to Zoology for the Use of Schools (1845) and First Steps in Zoology (1848).84,85,86 His second son, Robert Lloyd Patterson (1836–1906), a keen student of all the zoological facets of Belfast Lough, wrote Birds, Fishes and Cetacea commonly frequenting Belfast Lough (1880)87, which drew upon a series of papers he read to the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society (BNHPS). Another Robert Patterson (1863–1931), grandson of the first one, specialised in ornithology but wrote very little, concentrating his natural history interests in playing a leading role in the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club and the BNHPS.
Interest in birds was gathering momentum, though not always benevolent in spirit. Shooting and killing was much in vogue in the 1850s and Ralph Payne-Gallwey’s The Fowler in Ireland (1882)88 was a practitioner’s guide on how to shoot and trap wildfowl. It contained advice on how one could massacre birds by the hundreds by slowly paddling a punt equipped with a gun, mounted like a horizontal artillery piece, across muddy estuarine ooze towards unsuspecting flocks. Netting of plovers and other bird-catching tricks were described together with natural history accounts of the more valued quarry species. A more gentle bird book, with an evangelical flavour, produced by a school teacher, the Rev. Charles Benson (1883–1919) was Our Irish Song Birds (1886)89, which, according to Praeger, was ‘written with charm and understanding, worthy of a true naturalist’.
The migration of birds had long fascinated ornithologists. Despite a call by J. D. Salmon in 1834 for a chain of coastal observatories in Britain the initiative came from the Continent. In 1842 the Belgians attempted the observation of ‘periodic phenomena’, of which birds were a small part; then in 1875 the German bird watchers were organised into a massive scheme for recording the seasonal movements of migrating birds. In 1879 a pilot scheme was put into operation in Britain by the naturalists J. A. Harvie-Brown and John Cordeaux who had the bright idea of relying on the ready-made network of lighthouses and lighthouse keepers. Special recording forms were despatched to over 100 such coastal beacons and the experiment was a success.
Robert Patterson successfully quarried the zoological curiosities of the insects mentioned by Shakespeare and turned his endeavours into a charming and erudite book.
The following year, under the sponsorship of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the scheme was refined and extended to Ireland. The Irish naturalist Richard Manliffe Barrington (1849–1915) set up the project, enlisting single-handedly all the lighthouse keepers in the country. Another member of the landed gentry and a contemporary of Henry Chichester Hart, Barrington was born and lived at the family property at Fassaroe, Co. Wicklow. He possessed remarkable energy and enthusiasm for natural history. With the encouragement of his mentor, Alexander Goodman More, Barrington undertook several botanical expeditions to west coast islands, Midland lakes and Benbulbin, Co. Sligo and for the purpose of his ornithological work he visited most Irish islands. He is probably best-known for his work on bird migration. From the observations of the lighthouse keepers, Barrington gathered a vast amount of information on bird migrations and movements, much of it new and exciting (see here). He painstakingly compiled all the raw data and brought them together into a fat, information-packed tome The Migration of Birds as observed at Irish Lighthouses and Lightships (1900). The book is a particularly important reference source for Irish ornithologists as, unlike most other bird books, all the raw data is published in full, turning the book into a rich ornithological database.90
