414 Mr. PETRIE'S Inquiry into the Origin and 



unusually small size ; its height, including the conical roof, being but fifty-six 

 feet, its circumference thirty-nine feet, and the thickness of its wall, three feet. 

 Its interior exhibits rests for five floors, each story, as usual, being lighted by a 

 small aperture, except the uppermost, which, it is remarkable, has but two 

 openings, one facing the north, and the other, the south. These openings are 

 also remarkable for their small size ; and, in form, some are rectangular, and 

 others semicircular-headed. 



Since the preceding sheets were written, the search for interments in the 

 Towers has been prosecuted with great zeal, not only in the southern but in 

 the northern counties of Ireland ; but the results have not been such as to 

 require any further observation in this place, though I shall notice them, here- 

 after, in connexion with my descriptions of those Towers, where I shall prove 

 that, whatever may have been the ages of the bones stated to have been found 

 beneath them, the Towers, at least, had no pretensions to an early antiquity. 

 And yet, these discoveries have been deemed so conclusive, as settling the anti- 

 quity and uses of the Towers, that the northern and southern antiquaries have 

 each set up their respective claims to the honour due to first discoverers, and 

 entered into a controversy which may yet rival, if not throw into the shade, the 

 celebrated contention of the Irish bards of the seventeenth century, for the rival 

 glory of Leth Cuinn and Leth Mogha, or the northern and southern halves of 

 Ireland. With this controversy, however, I have nothing to do, though, as a 

 native of the intermediate province of Leinster, I think I might claim from 

 both the honour of, at least, originating these investigations for my own loca- 

 lity, as I believe it cannot be questioned that Sir William Betham's statement 

 as to the discovery of a pagan urn, filled with burned bones, in the Tower of 

 Timahoe, gave the first hint to these laborious investigators, both in the south 

 and north. And on this statement of Sir William Betham I am advised to 

 make a few comments, though, in truth, it appears to me scarcely worthy of 

 such notice. This discovery, long since put forward by Sir William Betham, 

 in various ways, has been finally thus stated, in the second volume of his 

 Etruria-Celtica : 



" The reliques of Buddhist saints, even a tooth, or collar bone, were held in such great sanctity 

 and veneration, as to induce the pious zeal of kings to erect towers over them. In this respect our 

 Irish towers also are singularly identical. 



