The hesperides tree - Nicholas Mosley

An eighteen-year-old boy travels with his parents to the west coast of Ireland. There he becomes involved with a wildlife station where biologists are studying the causes of variations among species of birds. This research has centered on an island with ruins of cells where hermits in the Dark Ages had lived. The boy also falls in love with a young girl who, it seems, might be involved with gun-runners. Returning to an English university where he has intended to study Biology or Literature, he finds neither of these disciplines relevant. After a year he goes back on his own to Ireland to try to discover what, if anything, those old hermits had been looking for. Is it possible that human nature, like a species of bird, might evolve and change?