Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/361

 OF STONE AND BRONZE. 337 mould to foriii the core or hollow in the interior of the celt. The form of this wedge may have been that shewn in pis. 2, 3, figs. 9, 10. The engraving of the interior of the mould, pi. 2, fig. 5, with its celt still remahiing attached, exhibits a groove cut in the upper portion of the movdd at right angles to the square side openings for the core-wedge, a contrivance evi- dently intended to prevent the wedge from shifting its true position in the slightest degree. The foregoing remarks wiU. apply with equal justness to the l)ronze celt-mould, pi. 3, figs. 5, 6, 7, 8. Fig. 7 a, shews a projection in the metal on the interior of the mould, which answered the same use as the groove for the core-wedge, previously mentioned. The idea I believe most usually entertained by English anti- quaries with regard to the antiques which I have just described, is, that they are c^z-sr-v for celts, and not celt-mouhh ; and the argument in favom* of this supposition is the alleged im- possibility of casting bronze out of bronze. This supposed difficulty is at once got rid of, by the fact of its being a common practice with brass and iron founders, to cast brass from brass, or iron from brass, or brass from iron, as the case may be, sinqjly by iirst smoking the interior of the metal matrix with the flame of an oil lamp, or a piece of tarred rope. If the above objection to these antiques being celt- moulds was valid, the argument in favour of their being cases would not hold, because they must have been cast on the celt, in order to fit it with such perfect accuracy as they are seen to do. It is a singular fact, and one which bears strongly in favour of these antiques being indeed moulds, that the " mould" from the British .Museum, pi. 2, fig. 7, and the Irish celt, pi. ], fig. D, exhibit on the interior of the former, and the surface of the latter, an incrustation of a semi-vitrified sub- stance, which can be picked off* with the point of a knife, and which appears to be a fused varnish of some kind or another, with which the interior of the moidd was smeared, previous to the casting from it being made. This vitrified incrusta- tion is often to be seen on Irish celts of the fifth class, that to which the celt we have alluded belongs. With the exception of the bronze celt-moulds which are in the British Museum, and one of the stone celt-moulds which is in the University collection, all the illustrations of this paper have been made from specimens in the museum of the Koyal Irish Academy. geo. v. du noyer.