148 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



It is Stated that many of the jet and amber beads in the Royal 

 Irish Academy, Dubhn, were obtained from tumuh Uke the one in 

 Phcenix Park. I can find no confirmation of this, and am inclined 

 to think the amber, at least, was obtained either in war at a subse- 

 quent time, or by barter with the Northmen. The shores of the 

 Baltic have been long famous for the production of the minerahzed 

 gum, amber. This is the only place from whence it was obtainable, 

 I believe, in the North-west of Europe. 



This ancient people have left us their stone axes (celts), 

 flint arrow-points and spear heads, perhaps, I may add, the copper 

 celts hkewise in our National Collection in Dublin, Ireland. The 

 cells alone are about 500. If we compare the flint and stone wea- 

 pons and tools of this ancient tribe or people with a like collection 

 manufactured by Mound-builders or Indians, we may immediately 

 perceive the marked superiority of the former as regards design. 

 They had attained a more advanced stage of civilization, perhaps, 

 than the mere hunting Red Man of this Continent. It is singular that 

 as yet we have obtained no stone gouges such as you may remark in 

 almost every collection one sees here. The gouges of this material 

 now in our Irish Museum were presented to the Irish Academy by 

 the King of Denmark. The bronze ones in our National Collection 

 were moulded by artificers, I think, who had taken the more ancient 

 stone ones as their models. Some of the latter may have turned up 

 since I left Dublin thirty years ago. In one of the mortuary urns a 

 flattened piece of copper was found with calcined bones. This 

 leads one to believe our Irish Celts were acquainted with at least 

 one of the metals at a very early period. 



The bone weapons — daggers or skeans and other implements — 

 in all amounting to between forty and fifty, I think, in Dublin in 

 1 861, are older than the time of the mechanical Danann or warhke 

 Gsedhil. This may be an erroneous opinion on my part. In a paper 

 contained in the Proceedings of the Anthropological Society of Great 

 Britain some years since, the writer stated : — " The stone and flint 

 implements are almost alike in Denmark, France, Ireland, New Zea- 

 land and Mexico, and the pottery of this (the stone age), is akin also 

 with similar ornamentation, while the tools and weapons of the bronze 

 age in Italy, Switzerland, Ireland and Denmark bear a near resem- 

 blance." In a general sort of way the assertion holds good proba- 

 bly, but an expert antiquarian in many cases could point to some 



