459 
Munster; an account of the battle of Crionna, between Cor- 
mac Mac Art and the Ultonians; the adventures of Laogh- 
aire, son of a King of Connaught, with the fairies; the 
manner in which Connor Mac Nessa, son of a Druid, ob- 
tained the crown of Munster; a very curious historical 
tale, entitled, The Seige of Druim Damhghaire, now Knock- 
long, in the County of Limerick. This tale is of great im- 
portance, from its undoubted antiquity, and the topogra- 
phical descriptions which it contains of the country about 
Fermoy, in the County of Cork. 
The last tract in the MS. is one of very great in- 
terest: it is in the form of a dialogue between St. Patrick 
and the two survivors of Fiana Eireann,—Caoilte Mac Ro- 
nain and QOisin, son of Finn Mac Cumhail. It describes 
the situation of several hills, mountains, rivers, caverns, 
rills, &c., in Ireland, with the derivation of their names. 
It is much to be regretted, that this very curious tract 
is imperfect, especially as no other copy of it is known 
to exist. But for these defects we should probably have 
found in this tract notices of almost every monument of note 
in ancient Ireland: and, even in its present mutilated state, 
it cannot but be regarded as preserving the most ancient tra- 
ditions to which we can now have access,—traditions which 
were committed to writing at a period when the ancient cus- 
toms of the people were unbroken and undisturbed. 
Rev. H. Lloyd, V.P., gave an account of a series of ob- 
servations of the Magnetic Declination, made by Professor 
Bache of Philadelphia and himself, in the hope of deter- 
mining thereby differences of longitude. 
It is well known that the magnetic declination, at a given 
place, is subject to frequent and irregular variations, and 
that corresponding changes occur, at the same instant of 
time, at very distant places. The first recognition of this 
remarkable phenomenon seems to have been made by Arago, 
while comparing the observations of declination made by 
