538 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



nominated in the Charter of T.C.D. as one of the first three Fellows in 1592 

 This crest (which he has not seen) would probably be as old as Tudor days 

 in England. 



In Mr. Bagwell's " Ireland under the Stuarts " (ii, 30), the captors of 

 Maynooth Castle in 1642 complain that they only got the benefit of one ass 

 in their loot. 



Mr. Garstin tells me that he read somewhere of Primate Boyle, who died 

 a very old man in 1702, having an ass to accompany him for the sake of its 

 milk. 



Mr.Westropp has found advertisements as early as 1723, and subsequently, 

 in Dublin papers of milch-asses, and the Royal Dublin Society, in 1753, offered 

 a reward of £20 for the importation of a Spanish ass (to breed mules). These 

 references show how the bringing in of the ass as a beast of burden caused 

 no surprise. The use of milch-asses among the richer classes may have been 

 not uncommon in the early part of the eighteenth century. 



Tae experiment was made about sixty years ago by a Mr. Hassard, wlio 

 owned a rough heather mountain in Co. Antrim, of letting asses loose to live 

 there as do the rough ponies of tlie country. They all died out in a couple 

 of years, thxis proving what Aristotle said long ago, that asses will not live 

 wild in a cold countrv. 



