in use without wheels exactly of the kind just described; these are figured by Dr. Mitchell in his suggestive book, The Past in the Present.

If this vehicle has died out in Wales it must have done so very recently, at all events it is still in full use in certain parts of Ireland, notably in the Glens of Antrim.

On looking at the illustrations it will be seen that the Irish slide-car is primitive enough. Two shafts

are harnessed on to a horse, the ends which drag on the ground are shod with short runners or shoes, sometimes the runners lie their whole length on the ground, or more generally they are tilted up so as to have pretty much the same slant as the shafts. (Plate III.) These runners, which do not appear in the figures given by Sir Arthur Mitchell, are a useful addition, as they save the lower ends of the shafts from wear and tear. The shafts are kept apart by cross-bars. In one car in Plate III., A, three holes

are seen in the last cross-bar, in which upright stakes can be inserted, as in the car in the background of Plate IV., Fig. 1, to retain the corn or the whins (as furze is called in Ireland) from slipping down behind. The lashing of a wicker basket or creel on to the shafts is an obvious step in advance, and these are used to bring down potatoes from the fields or turfs from the mountain. The straw harness in the lower figure of Plate III. is an interesting survival, and that, combined with the slide-car, carries us back to very primitive times.

The modern Irish name for this wheelless cart is the same as the old Gaelic name, Carr Sliunain. Dr. Sullivan * states that there is no reason to suppose that the Irish Carr is a loan-word from the Latin Carrus, the stem Car being probably common to the Latin, the Germanic, and the Celtic languages.

The Irish warrior of ancient times habitually carried a couple of spears, and a native poet, singing of the pursuit of a certain warrior, tells us that—

"The track of his two spears through the marsh

Was like the ruts of a car over weak grassy stubbles."

The phrase "weak grassy stubbles" refers to the rich after-grass of soft meadows. This is perhaps the first reference to the slide-car.

* W. K. SULLIVAN, Introduction to E. O'Curry, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, 1873, i., p. cccclxxvi.

† Loc. cit., p. ccccxliii.

FIG. 2. Slide-car, Co. Antrim; from a photograph by the Author.

Dr. Mitchell strikes a note of warning that is, perhaps, not unneeded.

"When I saw," he says, "what these carts were employed in doing, namely, transporting peats, ferns, and hay from high grounds down very steep hills entirely without roads, I saw that the contrivance was admirably adapted for its purpose, and that wheeled carts would have been useless for that work. But I saw more than this; I saw that these carts were used doing the exact analogue of what is done every day in the advanced south. When boulders, for instance, are removed on sledges from the fields in which they have been turned up; when trees are transported on sledges from the high grounds on which they have been cut; when a heavilyladen lorry puts on the drag as it comes down hill-what is it that we see but carts without wheels-carts without wheels preferred to carts with wheels, whenever the circumstances in which they are to be used makes the want of the wheels an advantage. It is not always an evidence of capacity or skill to use elaborate or fine machinery. A rough, rude tool may for certain purposes be the most efficient, and may show wisdom both in its contriver and employer. It would certainly show a want of wisdom in the Kintail Highlanders, if they used wheeled carts to do the work they require of their wheelless carts. Indeed, they could not so use them, except by putting the drag on hard and fast-being first at the trouble of getting wheels, and then at the trouble of preventing them from turning."

The same argument can be applied to Ireland.

In

a very hilly country half the time one is going up-hill and the other half down-hill; when going up-hill there is no load, and consequently the slide-car, being so