Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/209

Rh size of the timber and the character of the fibre. A hatchet is handled with the centre of gravity nearer the cutting-edge than the line of the handle; an axe with the centre of gravity in the line of handle produced. Of this, however, more hereafter.

The mode of attaching a handle to an axe in the bronze age is very instructive to us. The illustrations are suggestive enough, and need only a passing remark. It will be observed that for the purpose of handling, some of these axes are socketed, others wedge-pointed. The socketed ones were evidently handled as we handle socketed chisels. There is, however, one peculiarity, and that worthy of consideration. These bronze hatchets have in many instances a semicircular, ring-like projection (see Figs. 4 and 5), the object of which was for a long time a puzzle, but the suggested mode of handling the implements, if correct as seen in the diagram, points to a knowledge of directions of tension and of pressure, which engineers at the present day cannot but admire. If any one has ever struck a common hatchet to any great depth into timber, and carelessly endeavored to loosen it by raising the extremity of the handle, he may have found the handle separate from the metal near the junction of the two. Now the withe, or lashing, shown in this bronze instrument, has been put, as we should put it at the present day, in order to strengthen the connection at this, the weakest part.



Figs. 3, 4, 5, are examples of the modes of handling these ancient bronze hatchets. Fig. 3 is the most primitive. Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 illustrate the mode adopted to strengthen by tension-cords the weakest part of the handle. A remnant of this tension-cord is probably