Vice-county
A division of a county for recording the distribution of plants (originally) and animals. There are 152 vice-counties in the British Isles (only 40 of them in Ireland) and, unlike the counties, each is of roughly comparable size. This system of mapping has now been replaced by the use of the grid square as the basic unit, which allows much greater detail and avoids problems of changes in administrative boundaries and lack of exact comparability between units.From Peter Weaver's Birdwatcher's Dictionary
Copyright © 1981 by Peter Weaver