176 



all cases the genuine productions of Patrick and Columba ; 

 but they are not, on that account, the less valuable as histori- 

 cal documents, because they are certainly of great antiquity, 

 and express the opinions which the writers of these poems 

 entertained themselves, or believed the personages to whom 

 they ascribed them to have entertained. 



Lord Talbot de Malahide exhibited a small flint knife, 

 with a handle formed of moss, found in the bed of the river 

 Bann, at Toome bridge. 



" The knife was found, in the course of the present year, 

 in the bed of the river Bann, near the bridge of Toome, be- 

 tween the counties of Antrim and Derry . It is of grey flint, 

 and was accompanied by others without handles. It was, 

 however, enveloped in a kind of handle made of moss, and, 

 I believe, is the only one of that description ever discovered. 

 The moss has been submitted to the examination of Mr. 

 Wilson, of Warrington, who pronounces it to be the Hyp- 

 num brevirostre, a variety common in the neighbourhood 

 of Killarney and other parts of Ireland. This is what one 

 would have been led to expect by a priori reasoning, as it is 

 not likely that the stone-period of the northern archaeologists 

 reached beyond the existing flora and fauna. 



" I have seen no account of a similar application of moss. 

 Some of the stone knives found in Denmark, described by 

 Professor Worsaae, have elaborately ornamented handles of 

 the same material, but I believe none of these have been 

 found in Ireland. The generality are of a very rude descrip- 

 tion, very few of them are ground down to an even surface, 

 like so many beautiful flint axes and other implements found 

 elsewhere. These probably had wooden handles attached to 

 them, in the manner of the South Sea islanders' axes, lances, 

 arrows, &c. 



" It is supposed that flint knives were used, for sacred 

 purposes, long after the introduction of the hard metals, as 



