O'Reilly — On the Round Toicer of Chamhles. 645 



Mabillon's " Iter Germanicum " to a pharus or beacon tower at the 

 Irish monastery of St. Columbanus at Luxovium, now Luxeuil, in 

 Burgundy, and which, he says, seems to give some support to the 

 conclusion — " I have thus hypothetically advocated that they (the 

 towers) may very probably have also been occasionally used as beacons 

 and watch towers." 



Evidently had he known of the existence of any other such towers 

 on the continent of Europe, or elsewhere, he would have been led to 

 consider them, and examine the bearing that their details of construc- 

 tion and their history, might present on the views he was advancing 

 as regards the Irish round towers. A priori, it might have been 

 presumed, that some such towers did or even do exist, since, from 

 whatever point of view they may be considered, the presumption 

 would be that they were the work of a foreign people, that is of some 

 one of the colonies or peoples which, tradition tells us, arrived in 

 Ireland at various remote periods of the history of this country. 



Having these ideas in mind, but not keeping them directly in 

 view, I attended the Annual Congress of the French Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, which was held, in the first half of August, 

 at St. Etienne, in the Department of the Loire, in no way expecting, 

 or even thinking, that anything would present itself cognate with the 

 question. 



As is usually the custom on such occasions, the committee of 

 reception not only published a full description of the district, from 

 every point of view, but there was also prepared a small handbook, 

 with illustrations, indicating summarily the various localities of 

 interest accessible to excursionists. One of these at once struck 

 me as presenting the oxitline of a round tower, such as frequently 

 •occur 'in this country. To my inquiries for further details as to 

 the nature of the building, I could get no satisfactory reply, and 

 consequently I determined on assuring myself whether there was any 

 justification for my reading of the sketch or not. The point indi- 

 cated, Chambles, is easily accessible from Firminy, which is a mining 

 centre, and in connexion with St. Etienne by a steam tramway, as 

 mentioned in the guide-book ; but not wishing to wait for hours at 

 the railway station of Firminy, I took a trap, and had the advantage 

 of seeing the country and having a view of Chambles, which I would 

 not have enjoyed from the railway. 



The village is very old, though, singularly enough, it is not 

 mentioned in the remarkably compendious Geographical Dictionary of 

 Yivien de St. Martin, recently published, nor in the supplement to that 



