of vast arched stones. Ware, in his Antiquities, has given a view of 

 the latter cavern, (PI. 1. No. 5.) The cavern near Portaferrj, that at 

 Kilbixy, (County Westmeath,)* and others, especially in the County 

 Mayo, seem also referrible to this class; and Sampson, in his Memoirs 

 of Londonderry, (p, 330,) mentions several as existing in that county. 

 After the raths, the funeral mounts, so much resembling them, 

 demand some notice ; they are equally numerous over the country,-f- 

 and the Irish annals, particularly those of the Four Masters,^, ascribe 

 to them the very highest antiquity. Indeed they are " modelled 

 after such a manner as vv^isely and effectually to answer the ends for 

 which they were first designed, defying the injuries of the weather, 

 and all the usual assaults of devouring time ; they have already stood 

 several centuries, and must outlast the most artful pieces of architec- 

 ture the Romans, or more refined Greeks, have left behind them; nay, 

 we may truly say of the fairest and largest of these mounts, that 

 nothing is likely to deface them but what, at the same time, must put 

 an end to the frame of the globe itself."§ " They are raised on a 

 large base, and gradually diminish as they advance upwards, till at 

 length they terminate at the top in a flat surface, and in the whole 

 have the appearance of a cone. They differ in their dimensions and 

 height according to the difference of the character of the person for 

 whom they were raised, as they do also in the materials composing 

 them ; some being made of earth only heaped together, and others 

 of small round paving stones, with sand or earth mixed and piled up 

 in a high cone, covered with a coat of green sods. "II As they were 



* See Anth. Hib. vol. 2. p. 316. 



f There are no less than thirteen on the celebrated Curragh of Kildare. — See Gough's 

 Camden, vol. 3. p. 483. 



+ O'Conor-s Rer. Hib. Script, pp. 3, 5, 14, 17, 21, 22, 28, 34, 49, 54, 63, &c. 



§ Molyneux's Disc, ad fin. Boate's Nat. Hist. p. 190. || Ware's Antiquities, fo. 135. 



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