AINSWORTH, William. Esq. An Account of the Caves of Ballybunian, County of Kerry: with some Mineralogical Details. Illustrated with frontispiece and nine woodcuts (two full-page).

Dublin: William Curry, Jun., 1834. Demy octavo. pp. [iv], 362. Green pebbled cloth, title on printed label on upper cover. Mild staining to cover. A very good copy. Rare.
COPAC locates 10 copies. WorldCat 2.

“That part of the coast of Kerry, on which the caves of Ballybunian occur, may be considered as contained between the mouth of the river Feale, called Cashin, where it enters the Shannon to the south, and Kilconly point to the north, comprising nearly the whole length of the barony of Iraghticonnor, and is immediately opposite to the embouchure of the last mentioned great river.” William Francis Ainsworth FSA (1807-1896) was an English surgeon, traveller, geographer and geologist, known also as a writer and editor. He was born in Exeter, the son of John Ainsworth of Rostherne in Cheshire, captain in the 15th and 128th regiments. The novelist William Harrison Ainsworth was his cousin; at his cousin’s request he adopted the additional Christian name Francis, to avoid confusion. In 1831 there was an outbreak of cholera at Sunderland; Ainsworth went there to study it, and published his experiences in ‘Observations on the Pestilential Cholera’, London, 1832. This book led to his appointment as surgeon to the cholera hospital of St. George’s, Hanover Square. On another outbreak, in Ireland, he acted successively as surgeon of the hospitals at Westport, Ballinrobe, Claremorris, and Newport. He recorded incidents of his time in Ireland in ‘Ainsworth’s Magazine’ and the ‘New Monthly Magazine’. In 1834 he published ‘An Account of the Caves of Ballybunian in Kerry’.

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