[Illustration: Fig. 65. Sculptured Stone from No. 1 Crannog, Lake of Drumgay. About one-eighth the real size.] _Human Remains._--There have been, as yet, few instances of the discovery of human bones in crannogs. At Dunshaughlin, in Meath, at Ardakillen and Cloonfinlough, in Roscommon, the people appear to have met with a violent end, and there is no reason to believe that the remains are very ancient. The lake dwellers of Switzerland had cemeteries on the mainland, directly opposite their habitations, and it is probable that the Irish disposed of their dead in the same manner, but up to the present this subject has not been investigated. _Fireplaces on the Shore._--Numerous fireplaces on the shore adjoining crannogs were discovered at Drumkeery lough, and at Lough Eyes. In the immediate vicinity of the latter were traces of gins or traps for catching game. In the neighbouring bogs labourers have, at various times and in different localities, met with stakes planted in the original surface soil, in a vertical position, and sharpened to a point, seemingly by a clean-cutting metallic tool. Since fixed in their original position the peat had grown so much that it is now, on an average, about five feet above the pointed ends. It has been often surmised that stakes planted thus were in some way connected with the trapping of deer and other wild animals.[114] _Pottery._--Dr. Schliemann rightly designates fragments of pottery as the cornucopia of archæological science; it is always abundant, and it possesses two qualities--those, namely, of being easy to break, and yet difficult to destroy, which render it very valuable in an archæological point of view. Investigation has shown that the inhabitants of crannogs had in use a description of fictile ware, distinctly characteristic in style, graceful in form, and well manufactured, admitted by English archæologists to be superior to that possessed by the Britons or early Saxons. It is known that the primitive people of Ireland possessed the art of constructing excellent fictile ware for mortuary purposes of fire-hardened clay; they could therefore manufacture every-day culinary vessels of the same material. An immense quantity of pottery has been found in connexion with many crannogs, by which means facilities are afforded for comparing ordinary domestic vessels with the urns and vases of an undoubtedly prehistoric and pagan period. The great majority of specimens of crannog pottery present designs marked upon them, similar in style to the ornamentation observable on the walls of sepulchral cairns and the vessels deposited in them, on golden or bronze ornaments, on implements, and on the surface of rocks, all of which are usually acknowledged to date from prehistoric times.[115] Mr. Rau states that the fictile vessels discovered by him amongst the debris of Indian relics on the left bank of the Cahokia Creek, on the Mississippi, opposite St. Louis, resemble the ancient Irish fictilia,