PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 21' 



NOVEMBER 80, 1853. 

 A meeting of the above Society was held, at the Museum, on the 30th November, 

 Robert Patterson, Esq., President, in the chair, 

 when a paper was read by the Rev. J. Scott Porter, 

 on the state of society, arts, and manners among the primeval 



INHABITANTS OF IRELAND. 



The sources from which most of the facts embodied in the paper are 

 derived, are the county, the parochial, and the ordnance surveys ; the works of 

 Harris, Stewart, Petrie, Dr. D. Wilson, Wakeman, Shirley, and Wilde ; the 

 writers of various articles in the " Archseologia," the "Transactions of the 

 Royal Irish Academy," the " Ulster Journal of Archaeology," the Newry 

 and Belfast Magazines, and the "Dublin Penny Journal." Many objects 

 which would have illustrated the antiquities of Ireland, have unfortunately been 

 destroyed, of which no account that can be relied upon had been preserved. This 

 invests the subject with peculiar difficulties ; but it is also in itself obscure, because 

 it relates to a period of which no written records exist ; so that it may appear to 

 some to have no other foundation than conjecture. This, however, may be said to 

 be the case with geology ; yet the main conclusions reached by that science are 

 now admitted by every person who has examined and understood the facts on which 

 it rests. There is often a blending together of the facts relating to the more recent 

 changes of the earth's surface, and the primeval history of man. Thus, the remains 

 of an ancient canoe were found embedded in the earth, on the banks of the river 

 Carron, in Scotland ; and in the same stratum, but deeper down, those of an 

 elephant, of a species which has been for many centuries extinct. In the same 

 district was found, in 1824, the skeleton of a whale, and beside it the rude harpoon, 

 tipped with deer's horn, from which it had probably received its death wound. Both 

 lay far above the level of the tide ; and it is the province of geology to determine 

 the limits of time, within, or beyond which that region had been the bottom of a 

 frith, in which the whale once sported, and the primeval mariner pursued the 

 monsters of the deep. Mr. Porter was not aware of any recorded instances of the 

 discovery of boats, &c, in the alluvial soil of the valley of the Lagan; but such 

 remains have been found in that which borders Lough Foyle, and are frequent in 

 many of the bogs and inland lakes. But, although the first inhabitants of Ireland 

 were necessarily acquainted with the rudiments of the nautical art, they were quite 

 iguorant of the industrial use of metals ; many of their weapons and tools, which 

 would have been made of metal if they had been made acquainted with the mode 

 of working such substances, were made of bone, flint, and other kinds of stone. 

 Stone knives, chisels, hammers, axes, alts, &c, are common, of which specimens 

 were exhibited, illustrated by comparison with others brought from various places 

 in which society is yet in a rude state. Not only the finished weapons are found, 

 but, in some cases, the material rudely blocked out in stone ; and several flint 

 arrow-heads were exhibited, found in Dunmurry, which appear to have been re- 

 jected before they were completely formed, on account of flaws and imperfections. 

 Dr. Hart thinks it highly probable that a deer of the extinct species, Cervus 

 Megacerus, a part of whose skeleton is in the Royal Irish Academy's collection, 

 had been wounded by an arrow in one of the ribs ; but Professor Owen disputes 

 this conclusion. Another art in which the primeval inhabitants of Ireland had 

 made some progress was that of pottery : several drawings and specimens of urns, 

 from the sepulchres of the most ancient period, were exhibited ; and it was men- 

 tioned, that sometimes the pattern had been impressed by tying down on the soft 

 clay a piece of knitted woollen cloth. This shows that they had sheep, and were 

 able to apply their fleeces to account as clothing ; indeed, implements have been 

 discovered, made of the bones of the sheep, the ox, and the deer ; and the bones 

 of the hog and the dog have also been found, both in their habitations and their 

 sepulchres. They must, therefore, have had property and the rudiments of law ; 

 and were advanced beyond the fishing and hunting state, in which some modern 



