NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 81 



upper structure, and I estimated that its present height is 45 feet. 

 It is built of undressed boulders of red granite, and where white 

 lime, made of burnt shells, has been used, it is only sparingly so, and 

 wherever even a very small stone could be employed, it has been 

 fitted in. The doorway is at a height of 8 feet from the ground, 

 and the writer was enabled to climb up to it by the help of the 

 interstices between the stones. Here it was found that the wall 

 was -i feet 3 inches in thickness, the doorway itself being 5^ feet 

 high. 



Looking upwards through the interior, projecting stones at 

 regular distances seemed to indicate the existence of stone floors 

 when the tower was in use, and these floors were five in number, 

 so far as the present state of the tower enabled one to judge, the 

 communication between them being probably by means of ladders. 

 That Round Towers were, to some extent at least, intended for places 

 of refuge, is shown by their mode of building, as well as by the 

 fact of the door being placed in so comparatively inaccessible a 

 position. 



The next most important ruin in the island is the Abbey of St. 

 Finian. Its extent was easily ascertainable in 1870, and a few 

 years previous to that an arch, probably the east door, was intact; 

 but now the whole is an indistinguishable heap of stones. This 

 abbey is believed to have been founded by St. Columba in the sixth 

 century, before he commenced his missionary work in Iona. 



The remains of another church are met with outside the "town " 

 as you travel westwards. This is " The Church of the Seven" — or 

 Mor Sheishear — a very small place of worship, as it does not seem 

 from the examination made by the writer to have been more than 

 12 feet long. From a hole in the wall earth is sometimes taken, 

 which is guaranteed to banish rats from any house in which it is 

 placed. The natives are jealous of any stranger helping himself to 

 this sacred deposit, so the services of the man who has the assumed 

 privilege had to be secured; but the result of its use when trans- 

 ported to the mainland was not successful in causing the rats 

 to depart. 



N ear the Tower is a rude collection of stones, mostly chiselled, 

 which gets the name of " The Altar of St. John the Baptist." A 

 trough-shaped mass of sandstone, -4 feet 10 inches long and 5 inches 

 deep, with a cup-shaped vessel, rudely fashioned of the same 

 material, is placed in the centre. The uses of these remains are 



VOL. IV. f 



