Rebecca's father was telling me about a book a while back called 'The way that I went' by Robert Lloyd Praeger. I bought it a while back, and have just started reading it. It was a difficult book to track down at the time, I ended up ordering it from some specialist shop in Windermere. There is 2nd hand copy on Amazon at the moment.
It's a fantastic book, to whet the appetite David Bellamy portray a romantic image:
'geologist,zoologist,archaeologist,Irish Naturalist Optimus Omnium...' Swimming through a flooded cavern with a candle stick stuck in his hat, lying out all night in island heather to time the comings and goings of nesting seabirds, sifting the fossil bones of Ireland's ancient animals, exploring the cattle-trampled tombs of the Boyne - all these were part of the studying the natural history of Ireland.