375 
travelled along the Roman roads, and had halted either at a 
temporary residence, or at their own homes. They had, 
moreover, followed the well-known Roman practice, which 
the middle ages derived from that people, of preserving their 
more valuable property by burying it in the ground. Dis- 
coveries exactly similar to those just described, and under 
similar circumstances, have been made in Germany, Switzer- 
land, and France, which show evidently that all this traffic 
came from a common centre, the Roman empire, where such 
implements appear to have been designed more especially for 
the peoples of the distant provinces throughout Europe. The 
identity of form especially observed in the bronze leaf-shaped 
sword, whether found among the Celtic population of the 
British islands, among the Scandinavians of the North, 
among the Germans, and among the various Slavonic tribes, 
races which had nothing in common, points distinctly to this 
centre ; and two discoveries are recorded which prove clearly 
that these leaf- shaped swords of bronze did belong to the 
Roman period, and that they were in use until a late date 
in that period. One of these swords was found at Heilly, in 
the department of the Somme, in France, with other articles, 
among which were four brass coins of the Emperor Caracalla, 
so that these articles could not have been deposited there 
before the beginning of the third century ; and in another 
locality in that country, one of these swords was found with 
skeletons and coins, some of the latter of which were of the 
Emperor Maxentius, so that they must have belonged to the 
fourth century. The bronze ' ' celts" have been found not 
unfrequently in the galleries of the Roman mining works in 
our island under circumstances which would lead us to con- 
clude that they were left there at no very early date. From 
these facts, and others, I 'conclude that what has been called 
a bronze age, in the sense which antiquaries give to that 
term, never existed. 
H H 
