42 



of this nature progressed, the betaghtowns multiplied, and their areas 

 diminished, until at the present time we find them represented on the 

 Ordnance Survey as before expressed. And it seems to me that, notwith- 

 standing that survey, these 60,000 townlands must, from the same 

 causes, continue to increase, unless the legislature enforce the adoption of 

 its description as a requisite, necessary, and indispensable measure to 

 entitle parties to the benefits of registration of deeds and other instruments 

 affecting lands, tenements, and other hereditaments. 



The plowlands, for farming and other practical purposes of life, were 

 subdivided into cartrons and a multitude of small and unequal portions, 

 in like manner as the townlands are now into farms, fields, and tene- 

 ments, which, as their area was and is ever varying to accommodate ever- 

 varying circumstances and tastes, are not made the subject of mapped 

 expression ; and it appears to me that it would be unwise as well as 

 useless so to delineate them, unless their bounds were as fixed and change- 

 less as those of the townlands of which they are integral parts ; and to 

 such an attending contingency I do not apprehend that proprietors or 

 occupiers would silently submit. 



Counties or shires are of purely English introduction. I cannot find 

 their parallel in ancient Irish divisions. JSTot one of them existed before 

 1172; and almost all of them were created by or under the authority of 

 act of parliament between 1543, when the territory of Meath was di- 

 vided into two shires, and 1715, when the counties of Tipperary and 

 Cross Tipperary were united into one county. 



The account which the records in my own power thus enable me to 

 supply of the territorial divisions of Ireland, corresponds marvellously 

 with a yet more ancient representation of them, as communicated by the 

 Eev. "W. Eeeves, D. D., in an interesting and valuable paper read by him, 

 before this Academy, on the evening of Monday, the 22nd of April last. 



His 185 tricha-ceds represent my 184 cantreds. 



His 5560 bailebiatachs represent my 5520 towns or betaghtowns. 



His 66,600 seisreachs represent my 44,160 plowlands. 

 And his scale of contents is fixed, as is mine, at this latter division, 

 which determines the measure of all others in the ascending line. 



The difference, and it is a material one, between the two statements, is 

 thenumber of seisreachs in the ballybetaghwhichDoctorReeves makes 12, 

 and the number of plowlands in the town, which my authority makes 8 ; 

 the arithmetical differential deduction from this discrepancy is 22,440 

 seisreachs or plowlands, equivalent to 2,692,800 arable acres of land over 

 and above their appurtenant pasture, hills, rivers, woods, wastes, and 

 bogs. The Dean of Lichfield's MS. abbreviate before referred to, makes 

 a betaghtown to contain 960 arable acres over and above its appurte- 

 nances ; and this exactly tallies with my record authorities, which give 8, 

 not 12 plowlands, to each such town. But the Dean's manuscript dif- 

 fers from the Doctor's authorities and mine as to the gross number of 

 these towns in the kingdom, which he makes 5920, being an excess of 

 400, equivalent to 384,000 acres of arable land with their appurtenances. 



His summary of the kingdom is as follows, viz. : — 



