44 On Leaf-shaped Javelin-heads of Flint, 



respectively. The fourth is of a rhomboidal lozenge form, and is 

 larger than any of the others, being more than 85 inches long, and 

 about IJ inch broad. All, with great pains and skill, have been 

 chipped into form, both at the edges and on the surfaces. The central 

 part has been left moderately thick (quarter of an inch), apparently 

 for strength. This is especially the case in those of leaf shape. 

 That of lozenge form is thinner and more delicate. I suppose 

 these objects to have been the heads of javelins and not of arrows, 

 from their size ; their average length being twice that of the barbed 

 flint arrow-heads. There can at least be but little doubt that they 

 formed part of the warlike equipment of some ancient Briton. Is 

 there any sufficient reason why the missile weapons or javelins 

 ("tela") with which Caesar repeatedly tells us the Britons opposed the 

 advance of the legionaries through the south of the island, (B.Gr. 

 lib. iv. c. 24, 26, 32, 33), may not in many instances have been 

 tipped with flints ; so admirably fashioned for the purpose as 

 these are? 



Objects of this description have very rarel)' been found in barrows, 

 and never before, so far as I know, in this part of England.' Out 

 of the large number of more than four hundred barrows excavated 

 by Sir Richard Hoare and his friends, and described in " Ancient 

 Wilts," I do not find that a single specimen was obtained, and there 

 is not one in the Museum at Stourhead. Examples, however, do 

 exist in collections — apparently casual finds ; and there are figures 

 of such in Sir W. Wilde's Catalogue of Antiquities 0/ Eot/al Irish 

 Academy, p. 22, fig. 22, 23, 25), and by Mr. Franks, in JTorce Ferales, 

 (p. 135, pi. ii. fig. 39, 41, 42). These, however, are none of them 

 quite similar in form to the specimens from the oval barrow of 

 Winterbourne Stoke, to which also they are inferior in beauty. 



1 Since this was written, I have received " The Celtic Tumuli of Dorset," 

 by Charles Warne, F.S.A. In this volume {errata, p. 15; comp. p. 16, 27,) 

 is a woodcut of four leaf-shaped flat arrow or javelin heads, from an oblong bar- 

 row on Pistle Down, Dorset, opened by Dr. Wake Smart in 1828. The coinci- 

 dence with my Winterbourn Stoke discovery is not a little curious. Dr. Smart in- 

 forms me that the tumulus was of " no great height, and had nothing in common 

 with the true Long Barrow, and only deviated from the ordinary type of Eound- 

 Barrow by presenting an oval or somewhat oblong shape." It was doubtless 

 one of those I have distinguished as Oval Barrows. 



