may have been acquainted with many of those ingenious methods for attaching their stone weapons to handles, prevalent at a later period, which savage tribes still employ in order to obtain for the two parts of their weapons a solid coherence. We shall have occasion hereafter to treat more fully of the curious and interesting processes, to which here it is sufficient thus briefly to refer.

If it should be asked whether the art of polishing stones was known at the remote period of the antediluvian armourers, the reply would be that almost beyond all doubt it was then known. Such a simple knowledge assuredly was not beyond

the intelligence of workmen, who daily executed much more delicate operations than the imparting a polished surface to smoothed stones. However this may be, the smooth stone hatchets that were common amongst the earliest Celts and their contemporaries, are not found amongst the relics of the still earlier antediluvian era: but this circumstance may be explained in a manner which probably will excite some surprise, since the absence of smooth stone hatchets in the most remote ages must be attributed to the fact that the superior utility, for many purposes, of the irregular and splintered weapon was then known and understood. The smoothed axe

might be the more pleasing in appearance, but the rough one was the better in use.

On this side of the last geological revolution, and consequently in that period of terrestrial history of which we now proceed to treat-but still, before the dawn of historical ages, that is, before the time (uncertain enough) in which definite human tradition commences-man is found to have been armed in the same fashion that he had been before the flood, the great revolution in question. Post-diluvian man comes upon the scene without any advance in knowledge. To him, as to his predecessors, the use of metals is as a sealed book. He continues, after the fashion of what to him was the olden time, to hunt and to make war, equipped and armed with knives and axes and arrows of flint.

M. Boucher de Perthes, who speaks with the highest authority on all points connected with the weapons of the "Stone Period," positively affirms that weapons of the same class, all of them formed of silex, may be assigned without hesitation, some to the ages anterior to the flood, and others

to the post-diluvian pre-historic era. The former, he says, may always be recognised by their surfaces exhibiting the traces of minute splinters of every variety of shape; while, on the other hand, the latter may be distinguished by the evident fact that they were fashioned by knocking off splinters of a larger size, and always elongated in their form. It might also be added, apparently, that in the second section of the "Stone Period" the weapons have a much neater outline, and that they already indicate (or, at any rate, that they suggest) the contours which prevailed during the “Bronze Period "-typical contours that are universally well known. Thus, the objects represented in Fig. 2, No. 12, are seen at a glance to be the heads of either arrows or javelins. It must be added that these examples belong to the least remote period of the pre-historic age.3

axe of

large flattened egg,

Amongst the weapons of the period now under our consideration there are not a few which show their makers to have been endowed with the sentiment of beauty and elegance. The axe, for example, known to antiquaries as the " the dolmen," modelled in the form of and polished with the utmost care and nicety, exhibits in its curves a truly artistic contour. So, again, certain stone arrow-heads that are barbed and wrought with minute splinters, convey the idea of firmness and steadiness of hand, combined with a truly extraordinary delicacy of touch.

In conclusion, it must be added, as one of the characteristics which distinguish the first epoch of the " Stone Period " from the second, that in the latter, intermixed with all the varieties of flint weapons, there are found arrows of bone, and clubs made of wood only, or more frequently of stags' horns, as in Fig. 1, Nos. 3, 4, 5 and 7. In Fig. 2, No. 11, is shown a little axe of stone, pierced in the centre for the insertion of the haft: here we have the expression of the first idea of the socket, and also its original form. In this same Fig. 2, No. 13 is a knife of flint.

CHAPTER II.

THE BRONZE

PERIOD.ARMS

AND ARMOUR OF THE ASSYRIANS: OF THE GAULS: AND OF THE GREEKS OF THE HEROIC AGES.

IT has already been stated that, by common consent, the title of the "Bronze Period" has been bestowed on those early ages in which men, in consequence of their still continuing in ignorance of the nature and working of iron, employed the mixed metal bronze, an alloy of copper, zinc, and tin, for the manufacture as well of their implements as of their weapons. The three successive " Periods" of "Stone," "Bronze," and "Iron," we may here repeat, in this respect penetrated or overlapped one another, so that after the introduction of works in bronze, the old flint implements still continued to be retained in use; and in like manner bronze weapons and implements and those of iron, for a prolonged period of time, were in use together. Thus, when they invaded Gaul, the Romans always wore defensive armour formed of iron, and all their offensive weapons were made of the same metal; but, at the same period, the arms of the Gauls were constructed of both bronze and iron, and both metals were evidently held in high esteem.5

In this chapter we propose to treat of the weapons, and also of the defensive equipment of the Assyrians, of the Gauls, and of the Greeks at the time of the Trojan war. Our silence concerning the arms and armour of other contemporary nations must be attributed to its true cause-1 -the absence of historical monuments. Any attempt, therefore, to include other contemporary nations with the races that we

have specified, could only lead us deliberately to place before the reader unfounded conjectures in place of authenticated facts.

SECTION I.

Assyrian Arms and Armour.

The discoveries made of late years by M. Botta and Mr. Layard among the remains of the ancient cities of Nineveh have enabled us to give, with the most gratifying confidence, various details of the military equipment of the Assyrians.

We commence with the defensive armour of that great, warlike and restless empire of antiquity.

The shield which is represented in the Assyrian monuments is round, and it appears generally to have been formed in concentric circles; but whether the material was metal or wood, or any other substance, the sculptures do not indicate texture with sufficient minuteness to enable us to form even a probable conjecture. These circles may be observed when the inner faces of the shields are represented. If any shield was formed of metal, its outer face was probably covered with