JUURNAL OF THE COUN'l'Y DONEGAL HISTORICAL 'SOCIETY (c) Almost complete skull with lower and u~per jaw, of a girl about 14 vears-tne lower jaw outshot-uo·uer iaw not so well developed. ( d) lJ:pper jaw of a child of 6 years; jaw and teeth larger than usual in present day childrenspacing between the teeth wider. 1e) Teeth of an adult 40 to 50 years of age has CQnsiderable .development of the cement, hut no caries. (f) Similar to { e) of an old adult. Caries (i.e. breaking down of tooth substance) was absent from all the teeth examined but it must be admitted that diseased teeth were very unusual in this pa:rt of 1lreland down to forty years ago; due to the use of hard meal in oat bread. Although the bones furnish no evidence to suggest a date of burial, Dr. Walmsley was of the opinion that .it was not very ancient and suggested that an effort should be made to discover if the burial place was remembered as being used in the time of some famine or general epidemic disease. 6. Journal of D.H.S. Vol. l. :p -131. No. 1. p 31. 7. I also found the following objects within a. radius of three to four feet of this site : an iron penannular b:rooch...J. a piece of bone decorated with concentric circles a•nd ferns which may have been part of a comb; a bone pin; a flat piece of bone ;with a rivet hole m it; a sandstone spindle whorl; and a whetstone. 8. Joyce Social History of An· cient Ireland. Vol. 1. p.100. 9. See final paragraph in Mac Gill's paper Journal of Donegal Historical Society op. cit. Thrills and Disappointments of a Donegal Collector BY ANDREW LOWRY. (First President of the Donegal Historical Society) Everyone who has a hobby 1hat fovolves the acquisition of objects af:·sociated with it must often experience those delightful fe1elings ;which arise from the search for and final obtaining of rome rare or desirable· spet:imen which, at once, enriches their collections or adds to their knowledge of the subject concerned. There are people who affect to despise the amateur col'lector whose aim is to add specimen to specimen, whether the h01bby be coins, stamps, silver, glass, coloured prints o·r any of the other popular subjects of modern collectors. This attitude can be justified if collection is not accompanied by, at <least, a rea·sonable amount of knowledge of the subject and a desi.re to increase it. When this d'S combined with an eager enthusiasm it gives a 256. wholesome .pleasure and can become a very definite enrichment of life. It i'S not aI;ways true to say that a "little knowledge is a dangerous thinig." . Having been a student collector for well over three score y.ea.rs I have naturally e~perienced many plea'Sant thrills 8;nd some disappointments of varymg degrees of intensity-a few of which I shall try to tell you about in this shol't paper. Like most schoolboys the first objects in my collection were of a very miscellaneous cha1racter - marbles of the rarer so.rt, buttons and even empty spools were not despised. Old coins gradually re- .placed these early objects and, at fi,rst, were mostly poor, iW~rn specimens of the old Anglo-Insh Harp coppers, American cents, Indian annas etc.-absolute rub-
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