_Kitchen Middens and Refuse Heaps._--The most usual site of the kitchen midden, or collection of refuse thrown out of the dwelling, is at the entrance to the crannog, where was formerly the landing-stage or gangway leading to the shore; and what more natural than that prehistoric housekeepers should take the easiest method of getting rid of refuse by merely throwing it out of the door, a practice followed, on terra firma, by many of their descendants in Ireland at the present day. The accumulated mass of bones (invariably found in a broken state for extraction of the marrow) is in some instances immense; it is estimated that at Dunshaughlin, in Meath, about two hundred tons were sold for manure, three hundred tons were exhumed from the kitchen midden of one of the lake dwellings in Loughrea, county Galway, and fifty tons from that of Ardakillen, county Roscommon; the bones in the heaps have, evidently, in some instances, been gnawed by dogs after their owners had extracted the marrow, for which dainty the Irish appear to have had a peculiar relish, judging from their proverb, _Ma bhris tu an cnamh char dhuighail tu an smior_, i. e., though you have broken the bone, you have not sucked out the marrow: equivalent to saying, “you have done the most difficult part of the work, though you have not completed it.” Refuse heaps may be said to form also a perfect mine of antiquities, for every “cast” article of household gear was thrown into them; hence, the objects though numerous are generally fractured. After bones the next most frequent “find” consists of fragments of fictile ware. It has been remarked that if the former site of a crannog becomes again exposed to the light of day, by the _gradual_ cutting away of the peat under which it lay buried, perhaps during centuries, then many objects calculated to excite the interest of archæologists might be turned up from time to time without attracting particular notice, and thus no means would be left to form even an approximate estimate of the date of the crannog; but if careful examination be made of a kitchen midden, exposed to view by the simple drainage of water from the site, then the antiquities discovered afford tolerably correct and safe data from which to calculate the age of the structure.