A little over a year ago, in March 2013, I sat day after day in the library of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin and sifted through the archival records of Robert Lloyd Praeger (1865–1953), the most prominent Irish naturalist of his generation. Examining Praeger’s reprints, his hand-written manuscripts, letters to his wife Hedwig (“Meine Hedie”), his correspondence with botanical colleagues, his Zenith watch, notices from his landlord, newspaper clippings, numerous draft illustrations for his books, and so on, I learned three significant things about “Ireland’s Linnaeus.” First was the extent of Praeger’s walking in the Irish countryside; second, his interest in the urban environment (atypical for a naturalist of his times); and third, the sheer magnitude of the written reflection prompted by his fieldwork.Over the months following my visit to Dublin, I read—or in many cases re-read—Praeger’s work and gained a fresh appreciation of the extent of Praeger’s travel around Ireland. Lengthy field days traveled largely on foot. The magnitude of these peregrinations becomes clear when one considers the footwork undertaken in order to write Irish Topographical Botany (1901), Praeger’s comprehensive account of Irish plant distribution. In each of the summers in the last half decade of the 1890s, Praeger walked one thousand miles throughout the Irish countryside, his vasculum in hand, plucking and storing plants as he went, sorting his collections only at the end of arduous days. With this renewed appreciation of both what Praeger achieved and how he achieved it (on foot, and with patience), I resolved to walk one thousand miles of my own in the year ahead.
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