Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/48

30 In the lakes of Ireland alone, no less than forty-six examples of artificial islands, called crannoges, have been discovered. They occur in Leitrim, Roscommon, Cavan, Down, Monaghan, Limerick, Meath, King's County, and Tyrone. One class of these 'stockaded islands,' as they have been sometimes called, was formed, according to Mr. Digby Wyatt, by placing horizontal oak beams at the bottom of the lake, into which oak posts, from six to eight feet high, were mortised, and held together by cross beams, till a circular enclosure was obtained.

A space of 520 feet diameter, thus inclosed at Lagore, was divided into sundry timbered compartments, which were found filled up with mud or earth, from which were taken 'vast quantities of the bones of oxen, swine, deer, goats, sheep, dogs, foxes, horses and asses.' All these were discovered beneath sixteen feet of bog, and were used for manure; but specimens of them are said to be preserved in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy. From the same spot were obtained a great collection of antiquities, which, according to Lord Talbot de Malahide and Mr. Wylie, were referable to the ages of stone, bronze, and iron.

In Ardekillin Lake, in Roscommon, an islet of an oval form was observed, made of a layer of stones resting on logs of timber. Round this artificial islet or crannoge thus formed, was a stone wall raised on oak piles. A careful description has been put on record by Captain Mudge, R. N., of a curious log-cabin discovered by him in 1833 in Drumkellin bog, in Donegal, at a depth of fourteen feet from the surface. It was twelve feet square and nine feet high, being divided into two stories each four feet high. The planking was of oak split with wedges of stone, one of which was found in the building. The roof was flat. A staked inclosure had been raised round