364 [Proc._B. N. F. C, 



not reached the domestic hearth. Resident for a long time on 

 the spot, he said there could be no doubt but the specimens 

 found along the Lough side had originally come from the 

 lignite beds. Several pieces on his garden wall showed part, 

 still wood, although they had been there exposed for years. 



All this is, after all, only corroborating what has already been 

 seen and said by others, and this is all we ask to claim, our wish 

 being to place it again on record, believing it to be the proof 

 necessary to show the relation between the fossil wood and the 

 lignites, as required by the writer of explanatory memoirs to 

 sheet 27 of the Geological Survey. 



The second communication was the substance of a paper 

 read in London to a club of artists and dilettanti, which goes 

 by the strange title of " The Kenoozers' Club," the word being 

 an old rendering of the French " connaisseur." At its last 

 meeting, on the 2nd inst, in the house of Mr. Seymour Lucas, 

 the well-known artist, an account of one of the rarest antiquities 

 in Ireland, and preserved in our own Museum, formed the sub- 

 ject for the evening. The paper was read by Mr. J. Starkie 

 Gardiner, F.L.S., F.G.S., &c., and was as follows : — " The 

 helmet to which I desire to call attention is preserved in the 

 Belfast Museum, and its existence is probably unknown to 

 members of the Club. It is made of sheet iron, now much 

 corroded, is of conical form, 12 inches high, and 26 inches at 

 its largest circumference. It has been partially described and 

 figured in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology. The description 

 concludes with the expressed opinion that it is a bascinet of the 

 time of Richard II., founded on a fancied resemblance in its 

 form to a bascinet in the Tower, and on the fact that MacMur- 

 ragh, a King of Ireland, is represented in a contemporary MS. 

 with a conical head-piece. If, however, it be, as I suspect, a 

 unique example, its true age has to be inferred from analogy, 

 and in that case I think the following considerations will 

 enable an approximate estimate to be come to. The first point 

 about it is its general form, for, though conical, the apex is not 

 central, but the front recedes, throwing it well to the back, so 

 that the back and front curves seen in profile are different, but 



