136 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



thirty-six bracelets, severa iron circles which were worn 

 round the neck, iron rings, fibular, fragments of metal 

 plates, pieces of Celtic pottery, an iron sword, &c. It is 

 a fact worthy of remark, that the objects found in the 

 tumuli at Rivieres-les-Fosses and Chamberceau bear so 

 close a resemblance to those of the tumuli on the banks of 

 the Vingeanne, that we might think they had come from 

 the hand of the same workman. Hence there can be no 

 doubt that all these tumuli refer to one and the same in- 

 cident of war. 



'We must add that the agricultural labourers of 

 Montsaugeon, Isomes, and Cusey have found during 

 many years, when they make trenches for drainage, horse- 

 shoes buried a foot or two deep under the soil. In i860, 

 at the dredging of the Vingeanne, hundreds of horse-shoes, 

 the inhabitants say, of excellent metal, were extracted from 

 the gravel of the river, at a depth of two or three feet. 

 They are generally small, and bear a groove all round, 

 in which the heads of the nails were lodged. A great 

 number of these horse-shoes have preserved their nails, 

 which are flat, have a head in the form of a T, and still 

 have their rivet — that is, the point which is folded back 

 over the hoof (the clench) — which proves that they are 

 not shoes that have been lost, but shoes of dead horses, 

 the hoofs of which have rotted away in the soil or in the 

 gravel. Thirty-two of these horse-shoes have been col- 

 lected. One of them is stamped in the middle of the 

 curve with a mark, sometimes found on Celtic objects, 

 and which has a certain analogy with the stamp on a 

 plate of copper found in one of the tumuli of Montsau- 

 geon. When we consider that the action between the 



