"I do not know what brought out a naturalist streak in me so strongly." His father was an outdoor man, but he did not look at nature in detail. His mother would pick blackberries or collect mushrooms "and there was an annual pilgrimage on Ascension Thursday to Ballycorus to hear the cuckoo, but she was more interested in people than nature." Among family friends there was Tommy Mason - Thomas Holmes Mason MRIA - who showed him his first scientific specimen. That was near Skerries, when limestone would be heaped along the way for road-making. Mason would inspect these "fossiliferous" pieces and distribute appropriately to those standing around. "I was about seven at the time."
The "I" was Frank Mitchell, writing in his book The Way That I Followed, a tracing of the paths of the great Lloyd Praeger in his The Way That I Went of many years before. Above all, Frank Mitchell distributes praise and gives thanks to the memory of people who helped him to follow his life interests - the result being a career of unique and magnificent scholarship.
At the age of about 11 he met one of the staff of the Natural History Museum in Merrion Square, Dublin, and "the ensuing conversation was one of the turning points in my life." The friendship with Arthur Stelfox lasted until Stelfox's death at the age of 89 in 1972. Stelfox is described as a genius, "but bordered on the eccentric." A man of habit, his dress never varied: "tweed jacket and knickerbockers, open-necked shirt." He tried to interest Frank in insects, "but I stayed with the birds."
The next figure to appear in the author's tutoring was James Ponsonby Brunker, who worked in Guinness's. Every third week in March he would haunt the Dodder above Orwell Bridge, listening for the first chiff-chaff. Watching Brunker watching for the chiff-chaff was quite a sound piece of ornithology, and although he is gone for many years, I still try to visit the spot at the right time each year. Like Stelfox, "his dress never varied: trench-coat, cap and pipe."
On Friday, 9th January, a celebration of Frank Mitchell's life and work was held in the Edmund Burke Theatre, TCD, with contributions from his loving and loved family, and many names eminent in the academic world. Frank's enormous contribution to our knowledge of Ireland is unequalled. And what a companionable man of the countryside he was, always looking afresh at the land and its history as told in rocks and rivers and vegetation living and dead: bog, lake, forest and coastline.