317 
So effectually had the original writing been effaced in these 
places, that, in the first instance, Mr. Graves gave up the 
attempt to decipher it as utterly hopeless. But his attention 
was again urgently drawn to the subject by Mr. Eugene 
Curry, who had independently noticed the same fact. Being 
aware that it was usual for Irish scribes to insert, at the end of 
books written by them, their own names, and some notices of 
the date or occasion of the writing, he had been looking at 
these very places in the hope of finding such entries, and, to 
his disappointment, he had ascertained that they had been 
erased. Still he did not despair of their being ultimately read : 
and as he thought it probable that, like the body of the work, 
they were written in Latin,a language with which he is not well 
acquainted, he requested Mr. Graves to endeavour to make 
them out. One of the erasures to which he particularly 
directed attention was the one marked 7 in the list given 
above, and to this Mr. Graves first applied himself. He reads 
it as follows : 
Pro Ferdomnacho ores. 
A well-executed fac simile is subjoined, for the purpose of 
enabling those who have access to the manuscript to judge 
whether his reading be correct. 
Pyerromnacho ony 
On turning to erasures 3, 4, and 8, he satisfied himself that 
.: the same words had been written in those places also. It is 
thus established that the whole volume was executed by the 
same scribe, as, indeed, the uniformity of the handwriting suf- 
ficiently proves. Erasures 6 and 7 are considerable ones ; and 
there is good reason to apprehend that, in both these instances, 
we have to deplore the loss of much information respecting 
the manuscript. 
At all events, we know that it was written by a scribe 
named Ferdomnach. But it yet remains to be ascertained who 
this Ferdomnach was, and at what time he lived. 
