The country in the vicinity of Mellifont and Monasterboice is not only very fair to look on, but highly interesting in an archæological point of view. The town of Drogheda, the nearest place to the interesting ruins treated of in this article, is the only place in their vicinity where hotel accommodation can be found. It is full of historic interest and curious remains of the past. But to the antiquarian, to one who wants to see monuments as old as the Pyramids of Egypt, the _Brogha na Bóinne_, or burghs of the Boyne, should be a great attraction. They are the most colossal things of the kind known to exist in any part of Europe. One is known by the name of New Grange, and the other is called Dowth. Both places are on the Boyne, and only a few miles west of Drogheda. They are enormous, partially underground caverns, lined and roofed with great flag-stones. They are entirely pre-historic, and are supposed to have been used as places in which to deposit the ashes of the dead; but their real use can hardly be more than guessed at. It is generally thought by archæologists that they were erected by the Tuatha de Danaans, who occupied Ireland before the Milesians; but authentic history is silent about these gigantic structures. More than a dozen of such structures were discovered some years ago in the Sleeve na Caillighe Hills, near Oldcastle, in the County Meath. They are just like those in New Grange and Dowth, but not nearly so large. The flat stones that form the linings of those curious caverns or tumuli are covered with incised and generally semi-circular markings. They bear all the appearance of being writing of some kind, but no clue to its interpretation has yet been discovered. These markings were certainly not made for fun; neither could they have been made for ornament, for they are _not_ ornamental. There are thousands of them, counting what are in the tumuli on the banks of the Boyne and in the same kind of places in the hills near Oldcastle. It is a pity that no one competent for it has ever tried to decipher this curious writing, for writing of some kind it certainly is. When the cuniform inscriptions on the bricks of Assyria have been interpreted, it is strange that no one has tried to find out the meaning of the writing on the stones of these Irish tumuli. TRIM CASTLE