142 GOLD GORGETS OR LUNETTES. 



of such ornament wanting in metallic workmanship. There is a 

 bronze celt and a small hatchet in the Copenhagen Museum., Wor- 

 saae's Catalogue, pi. 37 ; a gold and bronze vase or flask, ibid., p. 

 61 ; and another urn, p. 63. Indeed it would be endless to specify 

 examples. 



I must therefore avow my present impression to be, that these 

 golden spoils from Padstow, Pen with, and St. Juliot, are the 

 work of early British or Irish art. I can see nothing in them to 

 put in requisition the higher artistic skill or genius of either 

 classic or Semitic art. The only difficulty is to account for the 

 supply of their raw material — gold. But this enigma involves no 

 more difficulty here than in some other countries where gold takes 

 an early part in Keltic, Scandinavian, and other primaeval art, 

 and seems to have been contemporary with bronze and iron im- 

 plements. Man in search of the precious metals seems, at no 

 time, to have found much difficulty in obtaining an adequate 

 supply of them, especially of gold ; and, in many cases, he may 

 have found it where the supplies have now been long exhausted, 

 or have ceased to be worth the search in competition with the 

 richly auriferous regions of modern discovery ; just as the Stream- 

 works of Cornwall have ceased to invite the enterprize of modern 

 mining companies. I would refer my readers, on this subject, to 

 the Paper by my valued friend, Mr. Albert Way, in the Archceo- 

 logical Journal, Vol. VI, on the Recent Gold-finds in Great Britain ; 

 and to further notices in Vol. XVI, p. 209, and Vol. VII, pp. 64, 65 

 of that work. 



In making this suggestion of the probable Irish origin of some 

 of these lunettes, I would refer to those considerations which I 

 had the pleasure of submitting to the members of this Society 

 in 1861, when I attempted to illustrate the remarkable Ogham 

 Stone from Fardel in Devonshire, near Ivybridge, (which is about 

 to occupy a conspicuous place in our National Collection), and 

 pointed out the ancient and subsisting memorials of the former 

 intimate connexion and intercourse of this County with the Sister 

 Island. 



