so far as I am aware, to aid in retaining them on the feet. The great majority of them have calkins or catches at the extremities, 2. The nail-holes are certainly peculiar. They are six in number in all, save very exceptional, instances. For each hole there is a long and wide oval cavity, evidently intended to give partial lodgment to the head of the nail, and through the middle of this socket the opening is made. 3. The disproportionate size of these cavities, and perhaps the absence of a suitable anvil, has left these primitive defences with an irregular bulging or undulating outer margin, and not unfrequently the inner one also, like the undulated 'saunions' these people fought with. 4. The nails are also curious. The head is very large and flat, so that it must have projected much beyond the shoe, even when imbedded in the ovoid groove, and generally approaches the letter T in shape. Their appearance will be more particularly noticed when we speak of individual specimens of shoes.
The shoes of a later date, as will be seen hereafter, are larger, wider across their face, and thicker; they are also more regularly formed, and the holes are square, or 'counter-sunk;' their borders are very rarely, if ever, undulated; or they have a continuous groove running along their ground surface into which the nail-heads fit.
The Abbé Cochet[1] reports that, in 1844, a discovery was made which was all the more interesting because it appeared to carry with it a determined date. At Yèbleron, near Yvetot (not far from Rouen), a wooden bucket, mounted with an iron handle and hoops, was found, and inside it were three bronze chandeliers, one of which,
- ↑ Le Tombeau de Childeric I., p. 161.
