Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/549

 IN MILITARY OPERATIONS. 379 In the year 1744, several bronze celts, also of Mr. Du Noyer's fifth class, were dug up at Karn Bre, a very an- cient fortification near the Land's End in Cornwall. With them were found a number of Roman coins, showing that these implements were probably in use among the Romans, and not among Gallic or northern nations only. ]Ir. Borlase, who gives this account,^ has engraved two of those which were found at Karn Bre. They are about 14 cen- timetres {= (> inches) long, and the cavity designed to receive the handle is about 3 centimetres (= 1^ inch) wide, so that they were quite large and strong enough to be used in the manner which I have supposed. They present a good example of the ornamental mouldings, which in celts of this general pattern usually surround the socket, and on which jIr. Borlase founds the followino- aroument. " If it shall o o appear,'^ says he (p. 286), after observing how curious and elegant the ancients were about their arms, " that we have reason to reckon these celts among the weapons of war, it cannot be wondered at that they should be ornamented with mouldings, and embossed orderl3^-figured ridges."' Thus far Borlase made an approach to the opinion which I wish to establish, but he concluded that these celts were the heads of spears, and thus fell into an error. Neither Borlase's conjecture that they were spear-heads, nor that of some other antiquaries, who have made them spear-tails, supposing them to have been intended to fix the spear into the ground, has met with any general acceptance. But, I think, the care bestowed in most cases upon their form and decoration, of which some examples may be seen in the preceding wood- cuts, and in those of the former volumes of the Archaeolo- gical Journal, is agreeable to the habits of the military life of the ancients, no less than of modern times. There is a great variety in the patterns of the hollow celts more especially, and as much elegance of form as was possible in instruments, which were to be employed as spades, levers, and wedges. VII. — In the same depositories with those bronze celts, which are the subject of the present investigation, there have often celts belonging to the Bibliothcque Na- M. Muret told me, that, judginij from the tionale at Paris, I observed one exactly style of ornament, he believed this celt to like that here cojiied from Caylus. It be Gaulish, not Roman, must have been either the same which he ' Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 281 — 283. possessed, or cast from the same mould. Plate .XXIV.