32 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



ANTIQUARIAN AND GEOLOGICAL NOTES, No. i. 



Read before the Hauiillon Association, December isih, i88g, 

 BY COLONEL GRANT. 



In 1862, when quartered with the 2nd battalion of H. M. i6th 

 Foot, at the Curragh of Kildare, Ireland, I obtained from a gravel 

 pit in rear of "The Lines'' a fine, well-preserved specimen of a 

 round flat, rather sharp-edged, stone Disk — deeply grooved on one 

 face, while a similar groove presented itself on the opposite, running 

 at right angles. It was taken from apparently undisturbed gravel, a 

 few feet below the clay overlying the bank ; that it was fashioned by 

 the hand of man seemed plain enough. How did it come there was 

 the only difficulty to solve, and I came to the conclusion that a 

 Pateolithic Warrior had been interred there. Human or other bones 

 for that matter are invariably ill-preserved in "gravel"' or "sandy 

 soil," and when the body underwent the process of decomposition, 

 the water-rounded pebbles and sands above would naturally fall and 

 fill the vacancy beneath, (perhaps a close search might have revealed 

 flint arrow points and stone celts also.) 



The specimen I obtained could scarcely have been " the Leiagh- 

 lama-liagh," (champion hand-stone) described by the Irish scholar 

 and antiquarian, Eugene Curry. Massive, it certainly was not, but 

 propelled from a sling perhaps it would have been as efficient a wea- 

 pon as in after time, " When the Slingers of Laney forced the Nor- 

 man De Bourghos to flee." 



Grooved oval disks, it is said, have also been found on this 

 continent. 



The gravel pits at the Curragh contain many fossiliferous peb- 

 bles of the carboniferous (mountain limestone mixed with granites) 

 Porphyries, etc., derived probably from " The Wicklow mountains " 

 adjacent. I have not seen the report on the surface geology of the 

 district, and therefore may erroneously suppose the gravel beds to 

 be a glacial or inter-glacial deposit. 



