an ancient waxed Table-bool:, 9 
writing ; it is much warped, but the margin left by the wax on one side is still 
distinctly visible. 
Another leaf (Plate ITT. fig. 1) exhibits on one side similar traces of having 
once been waxed; and on the other side (fig. 2.) there are deeply raised ridges 
of the wood, leaving sunken spaces, which, perhaps, were originally filled with 
wax, and used as reservoirs from which wax might be obtained to renew the 
‘tablets; this side of the leaf was probably the external page, or outside of the 
book. 
The other remains (figs. 3. and 4) appear to be fragments of a case, or cover; 
ornamented by lines curiously impressed upon it: they are of leather. 
From this brief account of the book it will be seen that it was probably the 
property of some schoolmaster, or scholar, who had inscribed upon it, amongst other 
things, his exercises in grammar and dialectics. The contents, as far as they are 
legible, are of no interest or value, and do not even aid us much in forming an 
estimate of the age of these curious relics: nevertheless, it can scarcely be doubted, 
judging from the characters inscribed on them (of which a magnified specimen 
is given (Plate II. fig. 4), that the tablets are at least as old as the thirteenth or 
fourteenth century; and yet it seems difficult to believe, after making every 
allowance for the antiseptic properties of au Irish bog, how an article of such 
frail materials could have been preserved in so unfavourable a situation for any 
very long period. 
T am aware that it has been maintained that the use of tablets of wax ceased 
in the fifth century: at least a learned French Dominican, Pére Alexandre, 
asserted this in the beginning of the last century, and employed the assertion to 
prove the antiquity of certain supposed relics of St. Mary Magdalene, from a 
waxed tablet found in a tomb in 1279, on which were inscribed the words « Hic 
requiescit corpus Marie Magdalene.” 
T have not had an opportunity of consulting P. Alexandre’s memoir, and I know 
it only from the very satisfactory refutation which his theory has received in a 
Paper in the Mémoires de Litterature of the Royal Academy of Inscriptions(a), 
by M.I’Abbé Le Beuf, who has clearly shewn that the practice of writing on 
waxed tablets, so far from having become extinct in the fifth century, was prac- 
(2) dead. Royale des Inscript, tom. xx. p- 267. 
VOL. XXI. b 
