Wednesday 28 January 2009

A letter from Belfast

This interesting paper was just sent to me by a friend. We have just left the year of the potato and this year we enter the anniversaries of Darwin's birth and the publication of "Origin of Species'. The paper, by M. Dearce at TCD, re-visits the correspondence between Darwin and James Torbitt, a Belfast wine merchant, regarding the latter's plans for breeding blight resistant potaoes around the 1880s.

Tuesday 27 January 2009

Rural images

And the same fried has brought to my attention the nice photography of David Creedon, out of Cork who currently has an exhibition titled Ghosts of the Faithful Departed runnning at Photofusion, London. The exhibition tells the story in photos of mass emigration from rural Ireland during the 50s and 60s.

Sunday 25 January 2009

Farmers help to promote conservation

Here is an interesting article sent to me by a friend but which doesn't include a great deal of information. It highlights farmers being used to promote conservation and it would be useful to learn more about the project and how farmers are being used and if there is anything to do with promoting agricultural biodiversity.

Anyone with more information?