been found: and that among other objects a thin bronze vessel has been discovered which is filled inside with the thick hard mass of clay over which it was cast and which could scarcely have been brought from a foreign country. Still less would any one have brought hither the casting as it is technically styled, that is, the small portion of metal which in casting runs into the aperture and is subsequently removed in finishing the object. But since similar pieces are found here in connection with antiquities appertaining to the bronze-period, the casting and the other work must in all probability have been executed on the spot; from which circumstance it may be observed that the most ancient forms and ornaments have been introduced with the knowledge of metals, rather than conceived originally in the North. In like manner the bronze and the gold, which are nowhere found in the country, are of foreign introduction. These metals might easily have been introduced, in the rude state, either from Russia, from the Ural mountains, or from England, where, as is well known, tin and copper, the constituents of bronze, occur in considerable quantities, and where gold may have been found in
length, by 3 and 3¼ at the blade. But these celt-moulds were sometimes made of bronze; and the accompanying engravings represent one of this material now preserved in the British Museum.—T.
