Donegal's Early Natural Historians, A Talk to celebrate 100 years of the Irish Naturalists' Journal

Donegal's geology, botany and zoology were first described in detail by a handful of natural historians. The most well known being Robert Lloyd Praeger, who in his 1937 book 'The Way that I Went' states that there is no where else where the beauties of hill and dale, lake and rock, sea and bog, pasture and tillage, are so intimately and closely interwoven. He urges the reader to walk the county, which was his own main mode of transport. Henry Chichester Hart, who returned from Raheny to live near Portsalon and died there in 1908, was a formidable hill walker and explorer. He walked every corner of the county to document it's botany, published in 1898 as 'The Flora of County Donegal'.
Praegers contemporary, Maud Delap was born in Maghery and lived there until her family moved to Valentia Island. She was a highly regarded self-taught marine biologist who published her findings in the Irish Naturalist. Maud and her sisters surveyed the marine life of Valentia Harbour.

Kinnfaela or T.C. McGinley was local to south west Donegal. A primary school teacher who found time to walk the townlands collecting local history and documenting it in his book 'The Cliff Scenery of south-west Donegal' (1867). His observant eye gives us a lens into that time.
All natural history begins with geology and the earliest accurate description of Donegal's geology is by Donal Stewart, who also covered the county on foot, as early as 1800, drawing and detailing its complicated geology.