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 slidecar, 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.

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

66

But I saw

"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. 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 heavily laden lorry puts on the drag as it comes down

1 W. K. Sullivan, Introduction to E. O'Curry, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, 1873, i., p. cccclxxvi. 2 Loc. cit., p. ccccxliii.

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."

In a very

The same argument can be applied to Ireland. 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 very light, is practically of no weight for a horse. Coming down-hill with a load a rigid vehicle has to be employed in any case, and so the slide-car is equally efficient, the chief drawback being that it can carry so little, but this is not of much account in small holdings. The slide-car has, further, the great recommendation of being made easily and cheaply without requiring the services of a skilled carpenter or wheelwright. It is also as easily repaired, and all the materials are ready to hand.

It is also interesting to note that these very primitive carts can be constructed entirely of wood and thongs, or ropes, and there is no necessity for any metal to be employed.

We now come to a gap in the evidence of the evolutionary history of the cart that is not easy to fill. What was the precursor of the wheel? There can be little doubt that the wheel was derived by slow modification of an antecedent object, and there is a strong presumption that this "missing

link" was a roller, but there does not appear to be any positive evidence to render this view absolutely certain.

The mechanical principle of the roller was known to remote antiquity, and it is generally accepted that the great stones of megalithic monuments, such as menhirs, cromlechs, and the like, were transported in this manner, as we know were the great statues of Assyria and Egypt.

It is not presupposing too much to surmise that a cylindrical tree-trunk might be placed beneath the shafts of a slide-car, or of a sledge, in order to reduce the friction. A constructional problem arises from the difficulty of keeping it in position. This could be overcome in the former by placing a short roller between the shafts and fixing a pin in the centre of each end of the roller, which could then revolve in a notch in the shafts, as in the accompanying diagram (Fig. 23), or between two pegs, as in the Portuguese cart (Fig. 31).

We must imagine a further development, which is also missing from Ireland, in the reduction of the central portion. This would become the practice as soon as man discovered that efficiency was increased by reducing the long frictional surface, and that the weight was lessened.

Herr Stephan, the late enlightened Postmaster-General of the German Empire, to whom we owe the introduction of the post-card, described, according to Poesche,' a very primitive cart that he saw in Portugal. A log is cut from the trunk of a large tree, the central portion is hacked away so as to leave a solid disc at each end joined by an axle. Poesche also mentions an ancient Egyptian battle scene, in which a large Aryan woman is depicted carrying off a wounded brother, husband, or son, on a waggon with similar wheels, drawn by oxen.

This explanation of the origin of wheels has been adopted 'T. Poesche, Die Arier, 1878, p. 98.