PROCEEDINGS 



OF 



THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY. 



1845. No. 51. 



November 10, 1845. 

 GEORGE PETRIE, Esq., Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Mr. Ball made a communication, the object of which was 

 to shew that the article called a crotal, of which there are three 

 specimens in the Academy's Museum, had properly but one 

 disc, and not two, as represented in Ledwich's Antiquities 

 (plate xxiv. fig. 6), and Camden's Britannia (Gough's Ed. 

 vol.iii. plate xxxiv. fig. 1). He founded his arguments upon 

 the fact, that the three specimens in the Academy's Museum 

 (Nos. 2, 3, 4, of the annexed cut) were each evidently per- 

 fect, while that figured by Ledwich and Camden, which still 

 exists in the University Museum, is a compound of two spe- 

 cimens, most rudely and recently rivetted together with a com- 

 mon copper rivet. (See No. 1, annexed cut). 



Mr. Petrie stated, that of the six specimens said to have 

 been found at Slane, he had seen three which were certainly 

 double, though he would not undertake to say that they had 

 not been compounded, as that in the University Museum 

 quite evidently is. A gentleman who had been recently in 

 Persia, on seeing the specimens in the Academy Museum, 

 stated, that in that country, at the present day, they were 

 used in the manner of castanets for keeping time, and that 



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