"All round the furnaces there have been found numerous remains of rough pottery; it is badly baked, and made without the help of the wheel, from clay which is mingled with grains of quartz--the pottery, in fact, which is called Celtic. Pieces of stag's horn have also been discovered, which must have been used for the handles of tools; also iron hatchets. One of them has a socket at the end made in a line with the length of the implement; it is an instrument belonging to the most remote period of the iron age. The others have transversal sockets like our present hatchets. One of the latter was made of steel so hard that it could not be touched with the file. With regard to coins, both Gallic and Roman were found, and some of the latter were of as late a date as that of the Constantines. The persistence in practising the routine of all the most ancient processes may be explained by the monopoly of the iron-working trade being retained in the same families. We have the less need to be surprised at this, because we may notice that the wood-cutters and charcoal-burners of our own days, when they have to take up their abode in a locality for any length of time, and to carry on their trade there, always make certain arrangements which have doubtless been handed down from the most primitive times. In order to protect their beds from the damp, they make a kind of shelf of fir-poles which is used as a bedstead. Some of them have two stories; the under-one intended for the children, and the one above for the parents. Moss, ferns, and dried grass form the mattress. Coverlets impossible to describe were made good use of, and some were even made of branches of fir-trees. These bedsteads take the place both of benches and chairs. A stone fire-place, roughly arranged in the centre of the hut, fills the double function of warming in winter and cooking the food all the year round. We may also add, that the fire, which is almost always kept lighted, and the ashes spread over the floor all round, preserve the hut from certain troublesome insects, which lose their lives by jumping imprudently into this unknown trap. The smoke finds no other issue but through a hole made in the roof."[40] Such is the description given by M. Quiquerez of the iron furnaces of a really pre-historic character, those, namely, which are characterised by the absence of bellows. We think, however, that there must have been holes below the hearth which afforded access to currents of air, and, by being alternately open or closed, served either to increase or diminish the intensity of the draught. But bellows, properly so called, intended to promote the combustion and chemical reaction between the oxide of iron and the charcoal did not then exist. The addition of the bellows to iron-furnaces brought an essential improvement to the art of the manufacture of iron.