226 



NATURE 



IJtdy i8, 1872 



the Severn to the Great Oiise, corresponding thus far with 

 the great escarpment of the oolite, but they hivenjvcr 

 b?cn met beyond that line ; and it is an interesting subject 

 of speculation to what tlu> dearth of these objects in the 

 country lying to the north- .vest is to be attributed. If it 

 was habitable and inhibited, it is difficult to imagine a 

 reason for th;ir absence, especially as in Yorkshire and 

 Lincolnshire there is abundance of suitable chalk flint. 

 This line of demarcation is not very much out of that 

 wliich separates the boulder clay districts from those in 

 which no boulder clay is met with. May it not have been 

 th: ctse, that when the implements were fashioned, Scot- 

 1 ind and the north-western parts of England were still 

 sjbmerged beneath the glacial sea, and that on their 

 emergence the south-east became in its turn depressed ? 



Notwithstanding all that has been written on the subject, 

 there seems to be still much doubt as to the uses for 



which some, and no inconsiderable number, of these 

 objects were designed. For all useful purposes it would 

 have sufficed that the cutting edge of a celt should alone 

 be polished and ground ; yet it is often, indeed usually, 

 found that the entire surfaces of the faces and the sides 

 exhibit a polish which could only have been obtained by 

 long and apparently profitless labour. And not only so, 

 but many of these are very fragile, being slightly made, 

 and of delicate workmanship, and others are of such small 

 dunensions, that, as AI. Boucher de Perthes pointed out, 

 they never could have been available for any kind of hard 

 work. Many of these exhibit no signs whatever of frac- 

 ture or even of scratching, either at the butt or the ed^e, 

 indications which could not possibly have been wanting 

 had they ever been used for weapons or tools. Besides 

 which, while many of the districts in which they are found 

 contain abundance of rocks suitable for all ordinary pur- 

 poses, these implements are often made from Asiatic jade, 



jadeite, tremolite, serpentine, green porphyry, nephrite, 

 and other stones of beautiful colours, and capable of 

 taking a high polish, many of which must have been 

 brought from great distances, and would have been 

 very costly both to import and to work. The museums in 

 Brittany, and particularly that at Vannes, are very rich in 

 jadeite implements of this kind, but they are also found 

 frequently both in England and Scotland. That of which 

 a figure is here given (Fig. i) was found in Burwell Fen, 

 Cambridgeshire, and is described by Mr. Evans as being 

 exquisitely polished, and a mottled pale green colour ; 

 the material is of a hard diorite, and as both faces are 

 highly polished the labour bestowed on the manufacture 

 must have been immense. 



Fig. 2.— Jet Armlet, Guekxs 



But if we conclude, as we must, with the author, that 

 implements for which such beautiful and intractable 

 materials were selected, could hardly have been in com- 

 mon use, we may indulge in some speculation as to what 

 were the uses they were designed to serve, notwith- 

 standing that, as Mr. Evans says, we have not sufficient 

 ground for arriving at any trustworthy conclusion. M. 

 Boucher de Perthes thought that they were deposited by 

 the survivors in the graves of deceased friends, as useful 

 to them on their resurrection, and he argued from this 

 their belief in a future state. It seems, however, hardly 

 probable that objects, many of which obviously could 

 not be serviceable, should be placed in tombs under the 

 belief that they would be so at some future date. In the 

 absence of any more satisfactory ^explanation, it may be 

 suggested that these things were intended by our remote 



Fig. 3.— b 



Armlet, Guern 



predecessors to represent the deities whom they wor- 

 shipped, and that by their varied sizes and shapes they 

 indicated the ranks and orders of their idols. We may 

 believe that men not having learned the art of representing 

 the human or animal form, were obliged to content them- 

 selves with symbols of their divinities — it may be their 

 Mars and Ceres — under the form of weapons of war, or in • 

 struments of agriculture. Nor is this so unlikely as it 

 might otherwise appear, when we know that these celts 

 are still objects of worship in India. Mr. Evans, quoting 

 from the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 

 says that they are there venerated as sacred, and it is 

 known that in a certain village in the Shewaroy hills 

 sime hundreds of polished celts, of varying sizes, re- 

 sembling those found in England and Scotland, are pre- 

 served in a temple, arranged in ro.vs. They are guarded 

 with the utmost jealousy by the priests, each representing 



