418 Proceedings of the Royal Lrish Academy. 
Bronze must have been employed during many ages, to be suc- 
ceeded in turn by the use of iron; this innovation would seem to 
have occurred at a period within historic bounds for Ireland, and I 
believe long after it was well known on the Continent and in England. 
Some would assign a date of about 2000 years past for its introduction, 
yet it does not appear it can be fairly stated to have obtained absolute 
supremacy over bronze until the arrival of colonies of Danish settlers 
and of northern piratical fleets: let us say, at the earliest, in the sixth 
and seventh centuries. 
The celt or chisel of bronze (a name-word derived from celtis, a 
chisel), is the legitimate representative and successor of our primitive 
polished stone celt, modified of course in shape in certain directions 
owing to the properties of the metallic alloy from which it is made; 
thus bronze possessed advantages enabling it to be cast much thinner, 
and with a wider cutting edge than the stone implement: still to a 
general statement such as this there are noteworthy exceptions, for 
whenever we pass beyond the boundaries of Ireland and visit New- 
Guinea, where stone implements continue to be fabricated and used, 
we obtain specimens of great beauty prepared from a tenacious greenish- 
coloured stone, so tough and hard that it admits of being ground con- 
siderably thinner than the finest bronze examples we possess, and 
having equally widespread cutting edges. We are enabled, however, 
in almost every instance to point out one important difference between 
celts fabricated in stone and those cast from bronze. In the bronze 
celt we invariably observe that the sloping sides which approximate 
to form the cutting edge are equally bevelled on both aspects, tapering 
with asimilar degree of obliquity; but stone celts are with as striking 
regularity found to be polished in such a manner that the cutting edge 
results from the intersection of two curves of different degrees of 
inclination, and this observation holds true, not alone for celts of Irish 
manufacture, but for those of New Guinea, Australia, &c.: it is also 
seen, if we select for examination one of the primitive-looking instru- 
ments which are fashioned by the inhabitants of the Coral Islands 
in the Pacific Ocean from the great shell of Tridacna, who are 
obliged to rely on this hard material to supply the deficiency of rock 
or stone of sufficient tenacity. These people likewise employ such 
dissimilar lines of curvature to produce a cutting edge. It is true 
that a stone chisel or axe often of very large size, constructed after a 
totally different type, and shaped like the modern straight-edged cutting 
chisel which our carpenters employ, is ascertained to have been used 
over southern China, Burmah, and the north of India; and I have 
obtained from New Zealand an example of this widespread special form, 
referable to a race peopling those lands antecedent to the arrival of 
the present Maori population; whilst the comparatively recent imple- 
ments made from New Zealand jade by the Maori approximate in shape, 
and in some degree in their curves, to our early Irish and the modern 
New Guinea types. It is interesting to observe how the primitive 
fabricators of polished stone implements discovered for themselves the 
