VOL. XXVII.] • PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS, Qq^ 



round this cave, supporting the mount, were not at all hewn or wrought : but 

 were such rude stones as those of Abury in Wiltshire, and rather more rude 

 than those of Stonehenge : but those about the basins, and some elsewhere, 

 had such barbarous sculpture (viz. spiral like a snake, but without distinction 

 of head and tail) as the fore-mentioned stone at the entry of the cave. There 

 was no flagging nor floor to this entry or the cave; but any sort of loose stones 

 every where under feet. Several bones were found in the cave, and part of 

 a stag's or else elk's head; and some other things, which I omit, because the 

 labourers differed in their accounts of them. A gold coin, of the Emperor 

 Valentinian, being found near the top of this mount, might bespeak it Roman ; 

 but that the rude carving at the entry, and in the cave, seems to denote it a 

 barbarous monument. So, the coin proving it more ancient than any invasion 

 of the Ostmans or Danes ; and the carving and rude sculpture, barbarous ; it 

 should follow, that it was some place of sacrifice, or burial, of the ancient 

 Irish. 



The Giant's Causeway is so well described in the Phil. Trans. N° 212 and 

 241, that nothing can be added to that account of it. We have the same 

 stone on the top of Cader Idris, one of the highest mountains of North 

 Wales; but ours is less elegant, and does not at all break off in joints; nor 

 could I satisfy myself that there are set joints (as in the Entrochus and Asteria) 

 in the Basaltes of Ireland; but that it is the nature of the stone to break off in 

 such a convex form. However, we could perceive no seams in these pillars, 

 excepting on those sides that were exposed to the weather. 



Another remarkable curiosity we met with, was a copper trumpet, like a 

 sow-gelder's horn ; having the hole for sounding near the middle, and two rings 

 at the smaller end, about two feet long. Three of these were found in an old 

 karn, i. e. a large heap of stones, at Balle Niwr, near Carreg Fergus. — We 

 could make nothing of the petrifying quality of Loch Neach; but that they 

 sometimes find stones there, having the grain of wood. — We met with some 

 Irish inscriptions there, and others here; which none of the critics in that lan- 

 guage, we conversed with, could interpret. 



Near Lame, in Antrim, we met with one Eoin Agniw, whose ancestors had 

 been hereditary poets, for many generations, to the family of the O'Neals; 

 but the lands they thereby held being taken away from his father, he had for- 

 saken the muses, and betaken himself to the plough ; so we made an easy pur- 

 chase of about a dozen ancient manuscripts on parchment. — As to your queries: 

 the mackinboy, is the tithymalus hibernicus, or latifolius sylvaticus. Cat. Hort. 

 Oxon. Their shamrug is the common clover. The potato is not indigenous 

 of Ireland. The arbutus is the same with the common. I have the account 



