Switzerland, of broken implements and articles collected together for the purpose of being worked up by the bronze-smiths. In both these cases the articles were in use simultaneously, and their association offers us a standard of comparison by which the age of isolated finds may be ascertained.
In both these, as well as in the pile-dwellings of the early Bronze age, the plain wedge-axe is conspicuous by its absence, while all the other articles are of a higher and better kind than those which belong to that age.
Hoards of Bronze Merchandise.
The most important of the hoards of merchandise found in France is that discovered at Réallon, after a violent storm had devastated the district. The waters of a stream traversing a little village of that name had hollowed out a new channel for itself, and most of the antiquities were discovered by the villagers in the earth, deposited at a little distance away. They ultimately were purchased for the museum at St. Ger- main, together with those which M. Chantre was able to discover subsequently, representing altogether no less than 461 bronze articles, comprising knives, sickles, lance-heads, horse-bits, rings, buttons, pendants, and bracelets. With them were several small stone rings, a bead of amber, and two of blue glass. The position of Réallon is on a route which has been frequented for a long time, leading from the valley of the Durance to that of the Drac; and it was, M. Chantre remarks, probably that taken by travellers coming from primitive Etruria, from whom the inhabitants of the lake-dwellings "received beyond a doubt the
