CHAP, x.] HOARDS OF BRONZE MERCHANDISE. 383 



Switzerland, of broken implements and articles collected 

 together for the purpose of being worked up by the 

 bronze-smiths. In both these cases the articles were 

 in use simultaneously, and their association offers us a 

 standard of comparison by which the age of isolated 

 finds may be ascertained. 



In both these, as well as in the pile-dwellings of the 

 early Bronze age, the plain wedge-axe is conspicuous by 

 its absence, while all the other articles are of a higher 

 and better kind than those which belong to that age. 



Hoards of Bronze Merchandise. 



The most important of the hoards of merchandise 

 found in France is that discovered at Reallon, after a 

 violent storm had devastated the district. The waters of 

 a stream traversing a little village of that name had hol- 

 lowed out a new channel for itself, and most of the 

 antiquities were discovered by the villagers in the 

 earth, deposited at a little distance away. They ulti- 

 mately were purchased for the museum at St. Ger- 

 main, together with those which M. Chantre was able 

 to discover subsequently, representing altogether no 

 less than 461 bronze articles, comprising knives, 

 sickles, lance-heads, horse-bits, rings, buttons, pend- 

 ants, and bracelets. With them were several small 

 stone rings, a bead of amber, and two of blue glass. 

 The position of Reallon is on a route which has been 

 frequented for a long time, leading from the va]ley 

 of the Durance to that of the Drac ; and it was, M. 

 Chantre remarks, probably that taken by travellers 

 coming from primitive Etruria, from whom the inhabit- 

 ants of the lake-dwellings " received beyond a doubt the 



