393 



O'Clery. — (Catalogue of the Stowe MSS.) Further, it is to be ob- 

 served, that those volumes were evidently transcribed from the origi- 

 nals before the work was entirely completed, for there are no entries 

 after the year 1605, though the dates are placed at the tops of suc- 

 ceeding pages for some years later, and the blanks left to be filled up 

 whenever any additional information might be procured, have never 

 received such additions as they have in our manuscript. It should be 

 remarked also, that the certificate and dedication prefixed to the 

 Stowe MS. are written on paper, not parchment, as in our MS. 



Under all these circumstances, I trust I shall not be deemed rash 

 in concluding, that the MS. now bought for the Academy is not 

 only the original autograph of the work, but also, that there is 

 scarcely a doubt of its being the very copy which passed from the 

 representative of the O'Gara family, into the hands of Mr. Charles 

 O'Conor, and which subsequently became the property of Colonel 

 Burton Conyngham, at the recent sale of whose books I had the 

 good fortune to purchase it. 



I have now no ordinary feeling of pleasure in resigning to its 

 most proper depository, the Library of the Royal Irish Academy, 

 this truly inestimable work, which, in the words of Mr. O'Reilly, " is 

 far above all our other Annals in point of value ;" and as I have had 

 the good fortune to purchase this work at my own risk, and might, 

 by letting it pass out of the country, have been a great pecuniary 

 gainer, I trust it will not be deemed presumption in me to indulge 

 the hope, that the resignation of it will be received as a memorial of 

 my attachment to the ancient literature of my country, and of my 

 zeal for the interests of the learned body to which I feel it so great 

 an honour to belong. 



GEORGE PETRIE. 



March 5, ISSl. 



3 F 



