1823.] in Purposes to which Iron is now applied, 411 



for such purposes than iron. I apprehend too, that nothing more can 

 be inferred from the fact, that both Celts and undoubted Roman 

 antiquities have been met with at Ladbrook, in the middle of the 

 town of Old Flint, than that the Britons had occupied that 

 situation either as a fortress or a town before the Romans settled 

 in it. 



8. That the Celts were not imported into Britain is plain, from 

 moulds for casting them in, and pieces of crude bronze being 

 found in places where, from the cmders that were with them, 

 they appeared to have been cast. If the bronze of which they 

 made them was imported, it is probable that the people who 

 supplied them with it exchanged it for tin, one of the articles of 

 which it was composed. But it cannot be supposed that a 

 people, whose country abounded with copper, should be igno- 

 rant of the art of working and smelting it, at a time when they 

 were mining and manufacturing tin, lead, and iron. The aes, 

 which Caesar says they imported, and the xaXmi/^uruj which 

 Strabo mentions, were probably nothing more than vessels of 

 copper or bronze, which foreign merchants bartered among 

 them for hides and metals. 



9. It has been shown that the sceptre or rod of Moses, and 

 many of the utensils of the tabernacle of the Hebrews, were of 

 brass ; but none of them of iron. The Greeks and Romans bor- 

 rowed a great part of their religious worship out of Egypt, where 

 it is probable bronze, as the first metal which assisted in the 

 arts of civilized life, was held in religious veneration ; and iron, 

 as a more modern discovery, in religious abhorrence. We 

 accordingly find in Hesiod, that iron was prohibited in certain 

 religious rites ; and Accennius, on the word " ahenis " in the 

 following lines from the iEneid, 



" Falcibus et messae ad lunam queeruntur ahenis 

 " Pubentes herbae, nigri cum lacte veneni," 



says : " Quia nefas id ferreis facere." Does not this custom 

 justify the supposition that the " aurea falx," with which Pliny 

 says the Druids, at certain seasons, cut the misletoe, is an error 

 for " eerea falx ? '' and, consequently, that bronze implements 

 were antiquated in his time in all common uses in Britain, and 

 only employed in the religious rites of the Druids ? 



10. The extracts, I have given out of Homer and Aristotle, 

 prove that the Phoenicians were in the habit of bartering their 

 toys and baubles for valuable commodities in Greece and Spain ; 

 I would, therefore, infer, that they exchanged trifles of that sort 

 amongst the Britons for tin ; and, consequently, that the articles 

 of jewelry, found in our most ancient tombs, are of Phoenician 

 manufacture. 



