The Ogam character was sometimes used in other material than that of stone. There is MS. evidence, as we have mentioned, of its having been applied to wood, which was doubtless the material first used for the purpose; and examples occur in bone, amber, gold, silver, and lead. Of these are the Conyngham gold manilla, the authenticity of the characters of which was, however, doubted by Dr. Graves; a silver brooch found in 1806 at Ballyspellan (Co. Kilkenny), and which is considered to date from the end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century. The specimen in lead was discovered by Mr. Wakeman in 1844; the little vessel upon which the scores appeared was then in use as an ink-bottle. It is interesting not only from the legend being in relief, which goes to establish its genuineness, but also from the circumstance of its discovery in Kilmallock, the name of which place it gives. The characters are in two lines, and, if read from the bottom upwards, give the words: ‘Nig-Lasmeich,’ and ‘Cill Mocholmog.’ The object on which they occur is a narrow, quadrangular vessel, one inch and three-eighths in height, with sides converging upwards, and with a low, small, circular neck. The Ogam character, in one form or another, was sometimes used as a charm, as in the case of the amber bead belonging to a family of the O’Connors, near Ennis, Co. Clare; or, as shown by Bishop Graves, for purposes of divination. Archæologists are not yet agreed on all matters relating to Ogams. The varied opinions as to the readings of most inscriptions, the somewhat uninteresting and meagre details of all, the doubt hitherto as to whether they are cryptic or not, the great difficulty of identifying them through the medium of Irish written records, limit the interest and check inquiry in this particular field of archæological research. But Dr. Stokes and Dr. Rhys have established their non-cryptic character, and shown their exceptional value from a philological point of view. Doubt, too, has long been thrown on their antiquity. Brash and others claim for them a pre-Christian origin; but recent authorities, such as Dr. Rhys, do not consider them earlier than the introduction of Christianity into the British Isles. It has been well urged by Bishop Graves that the division of the alphabet into vowels and consonants ‘furnishes internal evidence of its having been contrived by persons possessing some grammatical knowledge, and acquainted with alphabets of the ordinary kind.’ Other questions arise, such as the presence of the Christian emblem on many stones, the number standing in church burial-grounds, and their presence in caves, from which various deductions have been drawn. It has been urged by the claimants for the pagan origin of Ogams, that it was the custom of the early missionaries to convert things identified with heathen uses to Christian purposes, and to mark such objects as these stones with the sacred symbol of the Cross.