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515 
collected for the illustration of local history and antiquities in 
each county have been made but little use of; nor are they 
at present in a situation where they can be conveniently 
consulted by Irish scholars. They are still kept at the 
office of the Survey in the Phenix Park, and it would be 
very desirable now to have them removed to some more acces- 
sibly depository. ‘They-are of singular interest, having been 
collected at a period where traditions still lingered in districts 
now wholly altered in their character by emigration, the 
change that has taken place in the owners of the soil, the 
rapid growth of agricultural improvement, and the construc- 
tion of railways. In many places it will be found that the 
descriptions and drawings preserved in these collections are 
now the only remaining record of monuments which con- 
nected themselves with our earliest history, and of the ‘folk- 
lore’ which the famine swept away with the aged sennachies 
who were its sole repositories. 
*¢ So long as there existed any probability of these docu- 
ments being published, it was most proper that they should 
remain in the custody of the Ordnance department, under 
whose auspices they were collected. But it is now under- 
stood that the intention of publishing them in any form has 
been entirely and finally abandoned. 
‘<I beg leave, therefore, respectfully to request that your 
Excellency may be pleased to recommend these collections to 
be removed to the Library of the Royal Irish Academy. In 
no other place can they be more conveniently accessible to the 
scholars best qualified to use them for the promotion of his- 
torical and archeological learning. One great branch of the 
Academy is devoted by our charter, as your Excellency is 
aware, to the studies which these ‘manuscripts are so well 
adapted to assist. The Library is rich in the literature that 
will best illustrate them: it is in a central situation, accessi- 
ble, and liberally thrown open to all competent scholars who 
seek for admission, as well as to our own Members; and as 
