Kane — Account of two Antiquities. 3 



This would seem to indicate that grinding, or friction of some sort, 

 was used to give it its present shape. 



The material of which it is made seems to he a highly siliceous 

 felstone ; it is slightly brittle, and is fusible by the blowpipe. 



The other curiosity which I have the pleasure of presenting is, I 

 believe, unique as to its form and material in the Academy's Museum. 

 The chief interest, however, which attaches to it, is the extreme 

 antiquity which the situation in which it was found seems to show. 



I procured this curious wooden relic from the wife of the man who 

 found it; and I visited the locality in person, and was pointed out the 

 exact spot in which it was discovered by an eye witness of its dis- 

 covery. 



The bog of Lackleveragh (a corrupted form of Leckleavanat, " the 

 flagstone of Leavanat") is situate not far from the townland of Cam, 

 near Newbliss, county of Monaghan, and contains at about the depth of 

 twelve feet from the surface a strata of tree roots and stumps which 

 stand "in situ" as they once grew. 



Beneath one of these tree roots the bowl in question was dug out 

 by a labourer who was cutting turf. 



The depth from the surface at which it was found was about 

 fifteen feet, as far as I could judge. 



The root under which it lay must have belonged to a very large 

 tree, whose age, judging from the girth of the stump, cannot have been 

 less than fifty years ; which in its turn, as I have said before, was sur- 

 mounted by twelve feet of peat. 



The periphery of the bowl, when first discovered, was quite circular, 

 and its surface, internal as well as external, quite free from cracks or 

 scratches, so that it appeared to the finders to have been polished. 



Its diameter from lip to lip must have been then about 9^ inches, 

 and its internal depth about 4^ inches. 



Unfortunately, having been placed for two or three years beside the 

 fire of a cabin as a cradle for the cat, it became warped into its present 

 shape and appearance. 



It appears to have been carved with considerable skill out of a 

 block of root oak or yew. Bowls made of oak have been at different 

 times found in Great Britain buried at considerable depths. In the 

 "Journal of the Boyal Archeelogical Institute" (No. 100, p. 297, 1868) 

 mention is made of oaken bowls found in a bog near Tavistock, in 

 England. 



There is a curious reference to vessels made of yew in an old Irish 

 tract called "Suidiugad Tellaigh Temrach" (the establishment of the 

 House of Tara), which speaks of utensils formed out of a yew tree 

 which Fintan (the Irish Noah) had himself planted, and carved into 

 vessels of which an interesting list is given. 



