PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
21 
NOVEMBER 80, 1853. 
A meeting of the above Society was held, at the Museum, on the 30th November, 
Robert Patterson, Esq., President, in the chair, 
when a paper was read by the Rev. J. Scott Porter, 
ON THE STATE OF SOCIETY, ARTS, AND MANNERS AMONG THE PRIMEVAL, 
INHABITANTS OF IRELAND. 
The sources from which most of the facts embodied in the paper are 
derived, are the county, the parochial, and the ordnance surveys ; the works of 
Harris, Stewart, Petrie, Dr. D. Wilson, Wakeman, Shirley, and Wilde; the 
writers of various articles in the “ Archseologia,” the “Transactions of the 
Royal Irish Academy,” the “ Ulster Journal of Archaeology,” the Newry 
and Belfast Magazines, and the “Dublin Penny Journal.” Many objects 
which would have illustrated the antiquities of Ireland, have unfortunately been 
destroyed, of which no account that can be relied upon had been preserved. This 
invests the subject with peculiar difficulties ; but it is also in itself obscure, because 
it relates to a period of which no written records exist; so that it may appear to 
some to have no other foundation than conjecture. This, however, may be said to 
be the case with geology; yet the main conclusions reached by that science are 
now admitted by every person who has examined and understood the facts on which 
it rests. There is often a blending together of the facts relating to the more recent 
changes of the earth’s surface, and the primeval history of man. Thus, the remains 
of an ancient canoe were found embedded in the earth, on the banks of the river 
Carron, in Scotland; and in the same stratum, but deeper down, those of an 
elephant, of a species which has been for many centuries extinct. In the same 
district was found, in 1824, the skeleton of a whale, and beside it the rude harpoon, 
tipped with deer’s horn, from which it had probably received its death wound. Both 
lay far above the level of the tide ; and it is the province of geology to determine 
the limits of time, within, or beyond which that region had been the bottom of a 
frith, in which the whale once sported, and the primeval mariner pursued the 
monsters of the deep. Mr. Porter was not aware of any recorded instances of the 
discovery of boats, &c., in the alluvial soil of the valley of the Lagan; but such 
remains have been found in that which borders Lough Foyle, and are frequent in 
many of the bogs and inland lakes. But, although the first inhabitants of Ireland 
were necessarily acquainted with the rudiments of the nautical art, they were quite 
ignorant of the industrial use of metals ; many of their weapons and tools, which 
would have been made of metal if they had been made acquainted with the mode 
of working such substances, were made of bone, flint, and other kinds of stone. 
Stone knives, chisels, hammers, axes, alts, &c., are common, of which specimens 
were exhibited, illustrated by comparison with others brought from various places 
in which society is yet in a rude state. Not only the finished weapons are found, 
but, in some cases, the material rudely blocked out in stone; and several flint 
arrow-heads were exhibited, found in Dunmurry, which appear to have been re¬ 
jected before they were completely formed, on account of flaws and imperfections. 
Dr. Hart thinks it highly probable that a deer of the extinct species, Cervus 
Megacerus , a part of whose skeleton is in the Royal Irish Academy’s collection, 
had been wounded by an arrow in one of the ribs ; but Professor Owen disputes 
this conclusion. Another art in which the primeval inhabitants of Ireland had 
made some progress was that of pottery: several drawings and specimens of urns, 
from the sepulchres of the most ancient period, were exhibited; and it was men¬ 
tioned, that sometimes the pattern had been impressed by tying down on the soft 
clay a piece of knitted woollen cloth. This shows that they had sheep, and were 
able to apply their fleeces to account as clothing ; indeed, implements have been 
discovered, made of the bones of the sheep, the ox, and the deer; and the bones 
of the hog and the dog have also been found, both in their habitations and their 
sepulchres. They must, therefore, have had property and the rudiments of law ; 
and were advanced beyond the fishing and hunting state, in which some modern 
