to be attached to a cloak or garment so as to allow of its being employed at the same time as a fibula.
A torques found, with a bronze celt, on the Quantock Hills[1], probably Celto-Roman, was of bronze and massive, and exhibits a mode of adjustment which they had probably adopted from their Roman masters, one end terminating in a ring, the other in a hook. Such a mode of wearing it was probably in vogue as early as Augustus, for Propertius alludes to a hooked torques, and the "lactea colla auro innectuntur" of Virgil would apply either to the funicular type or the hooking end of the ornament, A thin and delicate torques of this type exhibited by me, from Major Moore, before the committee of the Institute, was purchased at Dublin.
One of the most singular varieties of the funicular torques is that found in Mecklenburgh[2], on a skeleton which had a diadem of copper, and a bronze sword; the ends terminate in spirals, as several armillæ and phaleræ do under the later periods of Roman art.
The funicular torques has been often found in England, Ireland, and Wales. One is described in the Catalogue of Mr. Woodward's Collection in 1728; a second was found at Ware in Norfolk[3]. A silver one is mentioned by Pennant in his History of North Wales; another was found in 1692 near the castle of Harlech, Merionethshire[4], and a third on the margin of Llyn Gwernan, or the Aldertree pool[5]. They are stated to be frequently found in Ireland with bracelets; those found at Tara have been described; another was discovered close to the cromlech at the island of Magee, county Antrim, in 1817, and detached portions of the same, and of other similar ornaments or armlets, in March, 1834[6].
Want of space compels me to reserve the continuation of this subject for a future number. SAMUEL BIRCH.
