22 
whose papers have unfortunately been lost. He made an accurate 
ground plan and elevation of this building, which he sent to the 
late General Vallancey ; who pronounced it to be a Phoenician Am- 
phitheatre, and deemed it a strong support to his favorite theory 
respecting the colonisation of this kingdom. He never saw the 
building, and, if he had, might have changed his opinion. 
About nine years back Mr. Leslie Foster visited this country, 
and passed Staigue by unnoticed; but, being prevailed upon by me, 
he was reluctantly induced to return and see it. He afterwards, as I 
am told, published, in some periodical work or newspaper, an ac- 
count of it; in which, being ignorant, I suppose, of what I have 
stated respecting Mr. Pelham’s correspondence with General 
Vallancey, he considered himself as the first discoverer of this an 
cient structure. 
He presented the Dublin Society with a model of it in wood, in 
which the measurement, I presume, is correct, and which gives a good 
general idea of the building, but, being worked smooth, may lead 
the hasty observer into the error of believing it to be built with cut 
stone. Had it been executed on the spot, and carved after the ori- 
ginal, something in the manner in which Dutch toys are finished, 
it would be a perfect representation. 
So far from having any appearance of cut stone, it is obviou 
that no tool whatsoever was used in its construction, and every ston: 
in it retains the figure it possessed when detached from the adjoin 
ing mountain. The most ignorant modern mason, laying the foun- 
dation of a circular building, would describe it by a line playing 
round a centre; but this, I believe, was laid out by the eye alone, 
and there is no accuracy of measurement in any part of the struc- 
ture. Even the doors entering into similar apartments, are of dif- 
ferent dimensions; and yet not so materially different as to suggest 
