An Irish Galapagos

THE FLORA and fauna of Lambay were surveyed in 1905 and 1906. About 90 species of plants and animals were added to the Irish list. Invertebrates, previously unknown to science, were discovered.

If Lambay, in the Irish Sea, could produce such results, an island off the west coast, it was thought, might yield even more dramatic ones. So, in 1908, a meeting took place at the National Museum in Dublin, attended by the leading naturalists of the day, including Robert Lloyd Praeger, who had organised the Lambay study. Its aim was to select an island in the west for intensive examination.

Islands were all the rage among naturalists at that time. Although Darwin spent less than four weeks on the Galapagos, what he found there had transformed biology. Such was the impact of his work, that islands developed a mystique for scientists, which has remained with them ever since.