xlix 
“I got a long box, 6 feet x 6x 6", hammered into the bank 
of the cut I made through Ardekillan, as I told you I would; and 
I have got the stratification into the box without being disturbed, 
and in great perfection, which I shall forward per canal boat. I 
forward also a large collection of bones and horns of elk, red deer, 
&c., old guns, swords, curious stones, &c., not got at the islands. 
“‘T have heard that the description given to the Royal Irish 
Academy as to the locality where the five gold rings were found 
which were discovered in the execution of the drainage works in 
this district, and presented by the Lord Lieutenant to the Academy, 
is incorrect. I beg you will set the matter right; they were found 
in the demesne of Strokestown, in solid cutting, lying just between 
the gravel and turf, at a depth of six feet under the surface, in the 
townland of Vesnoy, near the ruins (marked and called on the Ord- 
nance Sheet) of ‘ Urney Church,’ in the parish of Bumlin, barony 
and county of Roscommon. 
“‘T am, my dear Sir, yours truly, 
“ (Signed), Jonn O’FLauerty. 
“W.T. Mulvany, Esq.” 
In order to show the value of collections of antiquities, when 
the articles are arranged according to the localities in which they 
have been found, I have had all those obtained on the Lower Bann 
River so arranged, keeping distinct the articles found at each shoal, 
as at Toome, Portglenone, and Portna, which were the great fords 
or passes across this river. And in reference to the first, Toome, 
—the bar or shoal over which Lough Neagh discharged itself into 
the Lower Bann,— it is to be observed, that the Annals of the Four 
Masters, at the years 1099, 1149, 1181, 1197, 1198, 1199, refer to 
occasions when this ford was used for the passage of large bodies 
of armed men. On some of these, it is not unreasonable to suppose 
that some of the articles found in the excavation, and now pre- 
sented to the Academy, were lost. 
I find by the Academy’s Proceedings on 29th November last, . 
when Mr. D. Kelly read a paper as to the Artificial Islands near 
Strokestown, that both Dr. Petrie and Lord Enniskillen made re- 
marks identifying these islands with the crannogs of our Annals; 
and I need scarcely say that the facts fully confirm this view of the 
‘ d2 
