r-,, [Pl'OC. B.X.F C, 



KITCHEN-MIDDENS IN DINGLE BAY. 

 THE POSSIBILITIES ARISING FROM NATURE STUDY. 



At the third meeting of the Club, held in the Museum on 

 Tuesday, 16th January, two interesting papers were read. The 

 President, Mr. Robert J. Welch, who occupied the chair, first 

 called upon the Rev. W. P. Carmody to read the paper prepared 

 by himself and Mr. A. G, Wilson on " Kitchen-Middens in Dingle 

 Bay." Mr. Carmody, after a brief description of the great range 

 of sand-dunes in Dingle Bay known as The Inch, proceeded to 

 describe the extensive middens which the authors discovered on 

 these sandhills, in which he said — The middens were evidently 

 more extensive at one time, for they have been cut into by the 

 sea, so that a section is exposed forming a low cliff of five or six 

 feet, almost entirely consisting of cockle shells. At the foot of 

 this tiny precipice, almost along the whole 1,000 feet of its sea 

 frontage, we found many scores of stone "rubbers" and "hammers." 

 The rubbers were simply the stones of the beach flattened by 

 continual use. The largest measured about one square foot in area 

 by about one and a half inches thick. Upon asking a local 

 farmer if he had seen these "cockle-beds," we were surprised by 

 the answer — " Oh, yes ; the people of this place do be boiling 

 cockles there every year." Having seen many middens in other 

 parts of Ireland, and being satisfied ourselves that the middens of 

 Inch were ancient, partly because of the presence of stone 

 implements and partly because our first midden rested upon a 

 "raised beach," this answer was considered to be merely 

 "making conversation." When visiting our friend Major John 

 MacGillicuddy, of Ballynagrown House, near Inch, upon the 

 following day, we were still more surprised, however, to find the 

 statement of the farmer confirmed. Therefore we returned to the 

 site of the middens, and carefully examined the whole place 

 afresh, and we have both come to the same conclusion — viz., that 

 the kitchen-middens of Inch were originally of the same type as 



