In Fig. 187, however, is shown an Italian socketed celt of a common form, with the original handle still attached. This specimen is in my own collection, and was found about the year 1872 in the neighbourhood of Chiusi, Tuscany. With it were another, also retaining its handle, a large _fibula_ of silver, a scarabæus, and many small square plates of bronze, each having a fylfot cross upon it, probably the ornaments of a girdle. All these objects had been buried in an urn, which was covered by a slab of stone, and most of them are to be seen in the Etruscan Museum at Florence. With the exception of a fracture not far from the angle, the handle of my specimen is perfect. The preservation is due to its having been entirely coated with thin plates of bronze, the sides of which overlap, and have been secured round the handle by round-headed nails about ¾ inch apart. [Illustration: Fig. 187.—Chiusi. ½] This plating is turned over square at the end of the handle, where there is a little projecting bronze eye, through which a ring may have passed, so as to serve for its suspension. At the sides above the celt there are some larger round-headed nails, or possibly rivets; and the end of the branch which goes into the socket appears to be secured by a rivet, which passes through from face to face. At the end of the handle itself, above the celt, is a nearly circular flat bronze plate, with a round-headed nail in the middle to attach it to the wood. The fracture exposes the wood inside the plates, which has been preserved by the salts, or oxide, of copper. It has been thought to be oak. On the blade of the celt are some flakes of oxide of iron, as if it had lain in contact with some articles made of that metal. Indeed, from the form, as well as from the objects found with it, the presumption is that this instrument belongs to quite the end of the Bronze Age of Italy, or to the transitional period between bronze and iron. It may be well here to mention that celts of iron of the flat form, with projections at the sides like Fig. 45; of the palstave kind, with the semicircular side sockets; and of the socketed form, have been found in the cemetery at Hallstatt, in Austria, the researches in which of Herr Ramsauer have been described by Baron Von Sacken. These discoveries seem to show that all three varieties were still in use at the close of the Bronze Period. In the same cemetery celts of the two last-mentioned forms were found in bronze, and palstaves occurred with the wings formed of bronze and the blade of iron.