Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/205

Rh density the turf assumes as it becomes old and forms the inferior layers,—the shoe discovered at the bottom ought to have lain there at least 2400 years. These same turf-beds enclose, or rather cover, a place where there is charcoal beneath 19 feet 8 inches of peat, and this being on the primitive ground, gives a period of more than 4000 years since it was laid there. In the neighbourhood there are iron scoriæ indicating an ancient forge, and in this country, where iron mines only exist, wood is carbonized for no other purpose than to work that metal, and all the ancient forges used nothing else. 'More than twenty of these shoes have been collected in the soil of a Celtic establishment between Delémont and Soyhiere, on the right bank of the Byrse, territory of Courroux, and near Vorbourg (fig. 51). There were no traces of Roman articles, nor yet those of a posterior age, but only antiquities of the stone, those of the bronze, and, lastly, of the iron periods. The last was characterized only by horse-shoes, and by two discs resembling the iron money of the Spartans. On the other bank of the river similar shoes were also found (figs. 30, 31, 32), and two beautiful lance-heads or Gaulish javelins. Near the first shoes was a pointed spur. Another shoe of the same form has been met with in the track of an antique road, near Saint-Braix, not far from one of those ancient forges where objects belonging to the stone age have been discovered, A neighbouring hamlet is called Césais or Cæsar, a characteristic name also given to a ridge or mound near which passes a Roman road joining the plateau of the Franches-Montagnes with the enclosure of Doubs, and which shows traces of military works. The