181 
Mr. Wipe read the following paper at the Meetings of the 9th and 
25th of May, 1859 (see pp. 163 and 164) :— 
UPON THE UNMANUFACTURED ANIMAL REMAINS BELONGING TO THE 
ACADEMY, 
In arranging the collection of Irish Antiquities belonging to the 
Academy, I found a great number of bones, chiefly the crania of car- 
nivora, ruminants, and swine, presented to us at different times 
during the last nineteen years, and for the most part deposited in the 
erypts beneath the Library and Museum. This collection was com- 
menced at the time of the discovery of the Dunshaughlin crannoge in 
1840—when I deposited in the Academy many specimens of the various 
animal remains found in that vast bone heap. (See Proceedings, vols. 
iv. and vi.) Since then, some of our members have from time to time pre- 
sented individual specimens, considering the Academy the most suit- 
table receptacle for such objects. But alarge proportion of the collection 
was presented by the Board of Works and the Shannon Commissioners, 
during the drainage operations carried on in different parts of the country 
from the year 1846 to 1853. 
In presenting the Dunshaughlin bones, which were all found in 
connexion with the remains of man, my object was solely ethnological 
—the animals to which they belonged had in life been associated with 
man, had ministered to his wants, or were subservient to his amuse- 
ments; several of them bear unmistakable evidence of having fallen by 
his hand; and all were found in connexion with those antiquities which 
illustrate his social history, from the mid period between the introduc- 
tion of Christianity to the present time. Not so the great majority of 
those presented by the Board of Works, which were discovered in 
deepening the beds of rivers, or in land cuttings, totally unconnected 
with any vestiges of the human race, and several in situations where 
geologists believe they were deposited prior to man’s occupation of this 
portion of the British isles. In our former premises in Grafton-street, 
the Dunshaughlin bones were displayed in the Museum or the Library. 
In the present house all those osseous specimens were stowed away 
among the lumber of the crypts, neglected, if not unknown—no attention 
having been bestowed upon them by our naturalists; and some had 
never been removed from the cases in which they had been forwarded 
to the Academy years ago. 
Under these circumstances I have imposed upon myself the task of 
bringing them under the notice of the Academy, numbering, and arrang- 
ing them, and of putting on record, when possible, the circumstances 
under which they were found, while yet we possess sufficient material 
of either a traditional or documentary nature to enable us to do so. 
As, however, one of the divisions under which I have arranged our 
Museum of Antiquities consists of ‘ animal material,” including objects 
of bone, horn, skin, wool, hair, and gut, used in the arts, and embracing 
leather and woollen fabrics, I have excluded all the specimens now under 
R. I, A. PROC.—VOL. VII. 2E 
