90 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



It will be noted that destruction is hard at work on the forts along the 

 Cork coast, more so even than in Kerry, Clare, or Mayo. The cultivation of 

 land down to the very edges of the heads has led the farmers to remove the 

 defences for building or top-dressing. On the wilder coasts cultivation is 

 hardly possible, and the herdsman is less tempted to remove and destroy 

 ancient remains than the farmer. Thus it is pressingly incumbent on Irish 

 workers to secure and publish fully all that they can secure ; for later genera- 

 tions of students will find little instruction left for them on the cliffs. There 

 is now hope of this being well done in Co. Cork on the praiseworthy plan 

 inaugurated by Sir Bertram Windle. Some day international study must 

 become a force, and then the despised field records may be the current coin 

 of the exchange, and the theories, notes of depreciated value, or cancelled. 



There are some who call for " final results " at these beginnings of 

 explorations, others who resent later history being given and " nothing 

 about the origin or primitive builders." The time to satisfy the latter 

 demands in full has not become possible as yet. In the historic period it 

 were poor work to tell of the original structure and builders of a church and 

 nothing of its restorers or adapters; this should also be recognized as far 

 as possible in primitive buildings. 



The time has not yet come to generalize about Irish forts of any de- 

 scription ; we can only Heal with each case on its own merits. Our profound 

 ignorance may be forgiven silence, but hardly dogmatic assertions, should 

 it venture on such, as some would have us to do. How widely such forts 

 extend in time the few facts to hand show us clearly. Flint implements 

 have been found in the forts at Howth near Dublin, and Shanooan near 

 Dunmore, < 'o. Waterford. These may have been used by the first occupants, 

 or may have been lost before the fort was dug or even the headland carved 

 out of the solid land, or they may have been lost centuries after the place was 

 fortified. Chipped flints are found on fortified headlands elsewhere, notably 

 in the great complex fort of Trevalgue in Cornwall 1 ; but they occur in others 

 with finds even of the Iron Age. Of later periods, the Swiss and French 

 spur-forts caps barres) belong to the centuries from the Bronze Age down. 

 Irish promontory-forts are recognized as prehistoric in our earliest records ; 

 we shall see this to be the case at Duncearmna. The great promontory fort 

 of Cap Sizun (now, alas, I am told, entirely levelled) showed old Gaulish 

 remains overlaid by those of Boman occupation at the beginning of our era 



'"Victoria County Histories, Cornwall," p. 452, and William C. Borlase in 

 " Archaeologia." xliv (2), 1871-2, p. 423. 

 2 " Ancient Forts of Ireland," p. 33, fig. 4. 



