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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
period in Caithness, and showed that they did not differ materially from those 
occurring in the rest of Scotland. 
The Irish Cmnnoges. — Mr. G. Henry Kinahan contributes a very interesting 
paper on these primitive lake-dwellings to the last number of the Dublin 
Quarterly Journal of Science. The essay is amply illustrated with maps and 
woodcuts, and is worth perusal. He has found that a number of islands in 
Ballin Lough, co. Galway, are really the remnants of pile-habitations. In 
island No. 2 a section made to the depth of five feet discovered the follow- 
ing materials : — 
Ft. In. 
6. Peat and clay .. . ... ... ... ... ... ... about 0 9 
5. Peat and stones, with a few bones ... ... ... ... „ 0 9 
4. Wood ashes and peat, with thousands of unbroken cherry- 
stones, a few broken hazel nuts, a few broken bones, 
teeth, and a ball of red colouring matter ... ... „ 26 
3. Basket-floor, about one and a half inch thick 
2. Sawn oak beams, 8 by 6 inches „ 0 6 
1. Peat over 0 6 
5 0 
The oak beams were evidently sawn, not cut with a chopping instrument. 
Through them, at about nine inches apart, there were pairs of dowels 
that were used to fasten the basket-flooring to them. In this flooring, at 
every nine inches, were poles 2 - 5 inches thick, through which the dowels 
went and fastened the flooring to the beams. These poles seemed to be of 
ash saplings, while the rest of the floor was made of hazel rods. The cran- 
noge seemed to have been divided into huts or apartments, as part of a row 
of ash piles three inches in diameter was observed. No stone or other 
implements were found, a circumstance which Mr. Kinahan attributes to the 
incomplete character of his explorations. 
The Age of Man. — A Mr. John Locke, whom we do not suppose to be a 
lineal descendant of the great metaphyscian, has pronounced the following 
verdict, in the case of positive versus speculative archaeology : — “ It is sub- 
mitted that, conceding their due value and significance to the discoveries of 
geologists and archaeologists, the phenomena adduced up to this date do not 
afford adequate evidence in demonstration of the universality of the (so- 
termed) Stone era, or that it antedated civilization upon our globe ; and both 
sacred and secular history accord with human experience in authenticating, 
first, the Mosaical limit of 6,000 years since the creation of man ; secondly, 
that civilization, not savagery, was his primitive condition; and, thirdly, his 
utter incapability of self-renovation from moral and physical deoadence, apart 
from extern aid and instruction.” — See a paper read before the Royal Irish 
Academy. 
