IGO PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



ing 51 feet, while the diameter is 17 feet 2 inches. It is built 

 of red granite boulders, seemingly untouched by chisel or hammer, 

 and every little crevice is most carefully built in with smaller 

 stones and chips, so that even without the shelly lime, which 

 has been used only in small quantity, the structure would be 

 most substantial and firm. Irish round towers are all, indeed, so 

 carefully built, and resist so effectually climatic influences, that 

 the poet speaks of them as "the conquerors of time; " and when 

 one was blown down a few years ago, it lay unbroken at length 

 and entire on the ground like a huge cannon. 



In the districts of Fannett and EossguU shell-mounds can be 

 counted by the score ; the most typical being in the latter 

 quarter. To reach them you start from' the village of Carrigart, 

 the journey then being over a sandy waste about two miles 

 broad, on which the landlord has considerately placed finger posts 

 to guide the traveller. After other two miles of rocky land are 

 got over you arrive at Dundoan, and here the shell mounds are 

 frequent. They are invariably near the shore and above high 

 water mark, being readily recognisable even some distance away 

 by their rising in rounded outline eight or nine feet above the 

 level of the sandy shore. They all contain heaps of rough stones, 

 which may be the remains of the hut, but the bulk of the mound 

 is composed of the shells of such edible molluscs as Littorina 

 littorea, Patella vulgaris, Buccimmi undatum, Ca,rdium edule, and 

 Cardium echinatum. Bones also of horse, cow, sheep, and pig are 

 common, and almost always split up, an entire bone being rare. 

 Fragments of stone bearing the marks of fire are the only other 

 remains indicative of man's presence. These shell mounds are 

 less rich in remains than those of the Hebrides, some of 

 which I described in a paper read before the Society on March 

 29th, 1870. 



As to the age of these Donegal kitchen-middens, I would not 

 be disposed to claim for them a high antiquity. That they are 

 not of yesterday, however, is clear from the fact that on the shore 

 adjacent neither periwinkles nor limpets can now be ^ot, and the 

 oldest inhabitant has no tradition even of the origin of the mounds. 



They probably mark the site of the summer residence of 

 Donegal folk of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, who annually 

 left their mountain pastures to eke out their scanty food supply 

 by laying under contribution the shell-fish of Mulroy water. 



