4°2 Dr. Pearson's Observations 
known to antiquaries by the name of Celts. They were, pro- 
bably, instruments used by the ancient Britons, Gauls, or Celtae. 
The learned do not agree whether the celts were Roman work- 
manship or not : nor to what particular uses they were applied. 
Accordingly some persons have supposed that they were the of- 
fensive weapons of our ancestors ; and others have supposed 
that they were both offensive military weapons, and civil in- 
struments; but the most probable opinion is, that they were 
merely domestic tools. Many of the celts are cast after the model 
of stone implements, which are confessedly ancient British or Cel- 
tic chopping instruments, and tools for making holes. Several 
of these stone implements, in Sir Joseph Banks's collection, 
correspond exactly with the figure and size of the celts. Great 
quantities of these instruments have been at different times 
discovered in England, as well as in Ireland, and some few in 
France. Sometimes they have been found in heaps, as if the 
owner had, and probably did throw them away by basket- 
fulls, as things of little value. It has been very ingeniously 
conjectured, that when the Romans came to Britain they found 
the inhabitants, especially to the northward, very nearly in 
the same state as that in which our late discoverers found the 
natives of the South Sea islands. The Britons parted with 
their valuable articles of food, rarities, and commerce, for me- 
tal tools made in imitation of their stone ones ; but in time, 
finding themselves cheated by the Romans, who made these 
tools of bad metal, of the shape of the ancient British stone 
axe, as the inhabitants of Otaheite were by the use of base 
metals; they relinquished these tools when they became ac- 
quainted with those made of better metal, and according to 
the Roman patterns. Hence we see a reason for such great 
