to realize to a great extent the physical past of their inhabitants, and in imagination to partake of their daily life. If till lately the learned were on this subject purblind, it is the less surprising that the uncultured fisherman, gliding in his skiff over the placid surface of the waters and peering into the clear depths, should have failed to recognize that the mouldering stems projecting from the oozy bottom were traces of the love of security of his forefathers, that in the muddy matrix of the ever-accumulating lacustrine deposit, are preserved material evidence of a state of society long since passed away. Until the first half of this nineteenth century all memory of the ancient lake-dwellers of Ireland seemed to have vanished completely, but with the study of ethnology the interest excited in tracing out the idiosyncrasies of the various races of man penetrated to Ireland also, and now “few things can be more interesting than the spectacle of an ancient, long-forgotten people, thus rising, as it were, from the waters of oblivion to take that place which properly belongs to it in the history of the human race.”[1] Beyond the limits of history and archæology there extends a boundless period of human existence. Far back in this indefinite past we catch glimpses of a shadowy race, the first dwellers in Erin, who, it may be fairly surmised, were in a very rude state--nomad hunters and fishers, subsisting by the chase, which they supplemented by indigenous wild fruits: “Rugged type of primal man, Grim utilitarian, Loving woods for hunt and prowl, Lake and hill for fish and fowl.” They formed their ordinary implements and their weapons of warfare from flint, stone, bone, shells, and even wood. “They were, then were not; they have lived and died, No trace, no record of their _date_ remaining.” New comer succeeded new comer in Erin. This epoch was eminently characterized by the sway of brute force--a warlike front alone secured immunity from spoliation; in short, these times were governed on “… the good old plan That he should take who has the power, And he should keep--who can.” _Wooded nature of the Country._--The ancient classical name of Ireland was Ierne, which some etymologists derive through its Greek form from the Celtic, signifying, they say, “the extremity,”[2] the “Ultima Thule” of classic writers; a mystic land, girded by unknown seas, and protected by phantom dangers, the product of imagination, “Gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire.” The witty and eccentric Dean Swift, remarking on the custom of writers of his day, said:-- “So geographers in Afric’ maps With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o’er inhabitable downs Place elephants, instead of towns.”