319 
After the latter passage comes a Collect appropriate to the 
Festival of St. Matthew, and then, at the bottom of the page, 
is the erasure. 
By the use of a weak solution of gallic acid in spirits of 
wine, Mr. Graves revived the traces of the original writing a 
good deal; and, aided by a magnifying glass, he succeeded, 
at the expense of much time and labour, in deciphering the 
greater part of the erased writing. The following fac simile 
exhibits as much as can be read with any certainty : 
Mek Hyuk ' 
+e € AtktdyTe- 
+ 3{ atch: FHpHAN tar 
pK cKpimcT — 
Now, as the Heres Patricii undoubtedly meant the succes- 
sor of St. Patrick in the see of Armagh, we at once gain this 
additional and positive information, that the scribe who wrote 
the book was contemporary with some Archbishop of Armagh 
whose name ended with ach: and this cannot be said of the 
earlier Ferdomnach, who died A. D. 727. It appears, from a 
passage in fol. 18, 6, that Flann Febla had attained the pri- 
macy before this book was written, and he was succeeded by 
Suibne, who outlived this Ferdomnach. Nay, more, if we 
may trust the list of the Archbishops of Armagh contained in 
the Leabhar Breac, fol.99,6, or that given by Colgan from 
the Psalter of Cashel, there had been no Archbishop of Ar- 
magh, whose name terminated thus, for more than a hundred 
years previous to the death of the first Ferdomnach. On the 
other hand, we know that, in the time of the second Ferdom- 
nach, there were three Archbishops of Armagh whose names 
ended in ach, Foendelach, Connmach, and Torbach. But fur- 
ther, enough remains of the letter preceding the final ach to 
indicate that it was a b, certainly enough to show that it could 
not have been either an / or an m. Moreover, in the space 
