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The Boat with which I have to do was found in Lough Owel, 

 in the county of "Westmeath. In its immediate neighbourhood is a 

 crannogue not yet explored, and hard by two other smaller canoes not 

 yet raised, and which, if the season be favourable, will be taken up in 

 the course of the summer. After the drought of last year the depth of 

 the lake diminished by several feet ; and Mr. Levinge, while seated in his 

 row boat, on looking through the water, was attracted by a long piece 

 of black wood, which, while its main portion reposed on the peat, reared 

 a curved beak somewhat proudly from its bed. Further attention con- 

 firmed his first impression, that it was an old Boat of enormous length, 

 its bottom covered with a deposit of lake mud several inches in thick- 

 ness, and lying at that time in water somewhat less than a fathom 

 deep. It required some skill to float so large and so valuable a prize — 

 its sides worn to a knife edge, and ground down by the washing of the 

 tides ; its frame pierced through and through with many rows of holes ; 

 its stern board knocked out, and its oaken sides weighed down with the 

 saturation of the water of centuries — altogether a boat requiring care, 

 and sympathy, and tender handling. 



I shall now briefly describe the canoe, giving its dimensions. 

 As I have already said, it is a single-piece canoe, carved, and hollowed, 

 and fashioned oat of a noble oak of the primaeval forest. It is forty-two 

 feet long, and three feet five in breadth. Hitherto the boats which 

 have been found in Ireland have not exceeded twenty-eight feet in 

 length ; and Sir Charles Lyell mentions a famous Swiss canoe of fifty 

 feet long, and three and a half wide, as the largest which has ever been 

 picked up on the Continent. Had we this Irish canoe as she was origi- 

 nally designed and launched— unworn by the erosion of the water, and 

 unsmitten by the wasting hand of time — it would probably measure some 

 forty- four feet in length, and represent a width of four and a half feet. 

 But, be that as it may, this magnificent Boat may now be pointed out as 

 the Irish analogue of her great Swiss sister, mentioned by Sir C. Lyell. 

 The sides are imperfect ; but one has suffered by the wearing action 

 of the water more than the other. That its almost entire disappearance 

 is due to this cause is shown by the thinning down of the total thick- 

 ness of the bottom of the Boat to a sharp edge along the presenc ruined 

 gunwales. The comparative preservation of one side is easily accounted 

 for by the fact that it was protected on its exterior face by two rough 

 hewn oak planks, which lay close up against it. The construction of 

 the bow and stern differs most materially, but is similar in principle to 

 a large boat already in possession of your Academy. 



If strength were aimed at, it might have been expected that the 

 principle of the curved bow of the boat would have been carried out in its 

 after end. This, however, is not so ; for, while the entry is spoon- shaped, 

 the stern, such as it is, represents a section of a boat cut in two amid- 

 ships. But we are not left in the dark as to the peculiarity of the 

 stern ; for a hollow groove at the very end passes from one side to the 

 other, into which the stern board fitted. This, unless they had some 



