ON THE SO-OALLED BOW-PULLER OF ANTIQU1TY. 155 



In this memoir Strobel advances the idea that the object 

 was designed for a snaffle or nose-band to be used as a 

 curb for horses. He says that in the Iron Age some pro- 

 gress must have been made in the training of horses and 

 in this training a curb or snaffle must have been evolved, 

 and he therefore expresses the belief that this enigmatic 

 object was used for that purpose. He believes that it was 

 held against, or upon the nose of a horse in such a way 

 that the spines could be forcibly pressed against the flesh, 

 the two spines being below, while the longer single spine 

 was above, and hence this side of the object was ornamen- 

 ted. (1 have already shown that there is no constancy in 

 the relative length of the spines in the tricuspid ones. In 

 forty-two specimens, for example, the single spine is 

 longer in fourteen, shorter in thirteen, and of the same 

 length as theothers in fifteen. In some ofthem the single 

 spine is only half the length of the other two.) He ex- 

 plains the phallic emblem which is found on some of 

 them to indicate the soundness and virility of the horse in 

 training. In a second paper in the same bulletin (xv, 

 1889) , he had examined sixty specimens of which five were 

 of iron, the rest of bronze. Of these sixty specimens the 

 origin of thirty were known, and in some of these the 

 method of burial and associated objects were also known. 

 In this paper Strobel states that there are three theories 

 in regard to the probable use of this puzzle : First, to 

 assist in drawing the bow ; second, for stretching the 

 cord of the cross-bow (which was not used for a thousand 

 years after!) ; third, to aid in restraining horses not only 

 as a snaffle, but as a curb. 



Dr. Charvet, in the Bulletin of the Anthropological 

 Society of Lyons (1889, p. 70), has a communication on 

 this subject which he calls Gourmet de Repression. In this 

 paper he adopts the views of Strobel in regarding it as a 



