^48 



eight feet six inches long, and two feet ten inches broad, and 

 is round at the bottom, having a keel. 



Ware, in his work on the Antiquities of Ireland, states 

 it as his opinion, that the Phoenicians were the original colo- 

 nisers of this country, and that they used boats made of osiers 

 or wicker work, and covered with skins, in which they navi- 

 gated the bays and the mouths of the rivers. The ancient 

 Irish, he says, made use of another kind of boat in the 

 rivers and lakes, formed out of an oak wrought hollow, 

 which is called by the Irish coiti, and by the English cott, a 

 vessel well known to antiquity under other names. Pliny 

 calls boats hollowed out of a single beam, Monoxylce, from a 

 Greek word of that import, and describes them to be — 

 lintres ex uno hgno excavatae, i. e. boats formed out of one 

 piece of timber wrought hollow. And in another place 

 Pliny relates that the German pirates sailed in boats hol- 

 lowed out of single trees, each of which they made so large 

 as to contain thirty men. 



April 25. 



SIR Wm. R. HAMILTON, LL.D., President, in the Chair. 



The Rev. Dr. Kennedy Bailie commenced the reading of 

 a paper containing an Account of his Researches in certain 

 parts of Asia Minor. 



The Rev. Dr. Robinson gave an account of the casting 

 of the great six-foot Speculum by the Earl of Rosse. 



The publication of this account is deferred, for the pre- 

 sent, by Dr. Robinson. On a future occasion he expects to 

 lay before the Academy a statement of the performance of 

 the telescope when it shall be turned, for the first time, to 

 the heavens. The history of the casting of the specu- 



