INSCRIBED STONES AND ANCIENT CROSSES OF DEVON. 3938 
was with great difficulty obtained by the Rev. E. A. Bray, and 
removed to its present site in the vicarage garden at Tavistock. It 
has been described and figured in Bray’s ‘‘ Legends of Dartmoor.” 
Its most interesting feature, the Ogham inscription, he was not 
aware of, and consequently has not noticed. 
The Ogham characters are to Ireland what the Runic inscriptions 
are to the North, and the arrow-head or wedge-shaped figures 
are in Babylon and Persepolis. They are more capable of being 
understood than the cuneiform characters, but less known and 
deciphered than the Runes. Until recently they were supposed 
to have been an imposture of the bards. Of late, however, they 
have been more carefully studied, and considerable light has been 
thrown upon them. | 
Much has been written by students and historians of the country 
on this Ogham character, which was represented as the sole deposi- 
tory of the remaining Druidic learning in ancient Ireland. The 
concurring testimony of many centuries declared and authorized 
the fact, and accordingly its origin, history, and use were de- 
scanted upon as matters of certainty, and its rules laid down in 
every Irish grammar; but previously to 1784 no one had ever 
seen it practically used, either on parchment or on any monument, 
consequently doubts were urged against it; and it was only by 
the evidence of some unimpeachable inscriptions that the public 
could be brought to place reliance any longer on these oft- 
repeated assurances and statements. Lluyd had, in the beginning 
of the last century, mentioned an Ogham-inscribed monument which 
he had seen at Dingle; but his statement was unknown to the 
literary world. It was therefore with much satisfaction that the 
announcement was made, in 1784, to the Royal Irish Academy, of 
the discovery of a veritable Ogham inscription on Callan mountain. 
Theophilus O’Flanagan, the alleged discoverer, was despatched 
with instructions to show it to Mr. Burton, and the report of that 
gentleman was satisfactory. He found the stone and the letters 
covered with lichens, an evidence that they could not have been a 
forgery of O’Flanagan or of the present generation. 
In 1838, in a field immediately adjoining the high road in the 
pass of Duloe, near the lake of Killarney, some workmen acci- 
dentally broke into a cave whilst engaged in constructing a ditch. 
The cave consisted of a chamber, the walls of which were stones 
inclining inwards, haying a roof of long transverse stones. In the 
