hilst iron was too scarce to be mounted as scythes upon chariots, when
the warriors themselves wanted it for swords. The orator Cicero, in a
letter to Trebatius, then serving with the army in Britain,
sarcastically advised him to capture and convey one of these vehicles
to Italy for exhibition; but we do not hear that any specimen of the
British war-chariot was ever seen in Rome.

It is only in the tumuli along the coast, or in those of the
Romano-British period, that iron implements are ever found; whilst in
the ancient burying places of the interior of the country they are
altogether wanting. Herodian says of the British pursued by Severus
through the fens and marshes of the east coast, that they wore iron
hoops round their middles and their necks, esteeming them as ornaments
and tokens of riches, in like manner as other barbarous people then
esteemed ornaments of silver and gold. Their only money, according to
Caesar, consisted of pieces of brass or iron, reduced to a certain
standard weight.[11] It is particularly important to observe, says M.
Worsaae, that all the antiquities which have hitherto been found in the
large burying places of the Iron period, in Switzerland, Bavaria,
Baden, France, England, and the North, exhibit traces more or less of
Roman influence.[12] The Romans themselves used weapons of bronze when
they could not obtain iron in sufficient quantity, and many of the
Roman weapons dug out of the ancient tumuli are of that metal. They
possessed the art of tempering and hardening bronze to such a degree as
to enable them to manufacture swords with it of a pretty good edge; and
in those countries which they penetrated, their bronze implements
gradually supplanted those which had been previously fashioned of
stone. Great quantities of bronze tools have been found in different
parts of England,--sometimes in heaps, as if they had been thrown away
in basketfuls as things of little value. It has been conjectured that
when the Romans came into Britain they found the inhabitants,
especially those to the northward, in very nearly the same state as
Captain Cook and other voyagers found the inhabitants of the South Sea
Islands; that the Britons parted with their food and valuables for
tools of inferior metal made in imitation of their stone ones; but
finding themselves cheated by the Romans, as the natives of Otaheite
have been cheated by Europeans, the Britons relinquished the bad tools
when they became