ANTIQUITIES. 
Art. ].—Remarks on some Fragments of an ancient waxed Table-book, found 
ina Bog at Maghera, County of Derry, and presented to the Royal Irish 
Academy by the Rev. J. Spencer Knox, A.M. By James Hentuorn 
Topp, D.D., M. R.1. A., Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. 
Read 26th May, 1845. 
ON a former occasion I had the honour of presenting to the Academy, in the 
name of my friend, the Rev. J. Spencer Knox, some fragments of a very curious 
ancient waxed tablet, or table-book, which was found in a bog near Maghera, 
in the county of Derry, and as circumstances then prevented me from making 
any remarks on them, I hope I may now be permitted to supply the defect. 
Mr. Knox, in reply to my inquiries, has given me the following account of 
the place where they were found: “I can furnish no other memorial concerning 
them than that they were discovered two years since by some turf-diggers, at 
four feet beneath the surface, in a bog about two miles distant from hence [i. e. 
from Maghera]. The bog itself is about four miles in length, and varying from 
one to three miles in breadth: the river Moyola traverses its centre from end to 
end. I possess many objects discovered from time to time within its limits, as 
celts, grinding querns, coins (Edwards and Elizabeths), with elf-stones, brass 
vessels, swords, &c., and a large and once beautiful canoe. Black oak and 
fir abound in it; and I have also got large bundles of stakes, popularly called 
deer toils. The soil beneath the turf is for the most part gravel, or gravelly 
sand.” 
As this is all that can now be known of the history of these tablets, I shall 
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