IT is a question whether, if in this work strict regard had been paid to the development of different forms of cutting implements, the knife ought not to have occupied the first place, rather than the hatchet or celt; for when bronze was first employed for cutting purposes it was no doubt extremely scarce, and would therefore hardly have been available for any but the smaller kinds of tools and weapons. [Illustration: Fig. 239.—Wicken Fen. ½] Both hatchets and knives, or rather knife-daggers, have been found with interments in barrows; but it seems better to include the majority of the latter class of instruments, which appear to occupy an intermediate place between tools and weapons, in the next chapter, which treats of daggers; rather than in this, which will be devoted to what appear to be forms of tools and implements. Some of these, however, like the celt or hatchet, may have been equally available both for peaceful and warlike uses; and though I have to some extent tried to keep tools and weapons under different headings, it appears impossible completely to carry out any such system of arrangement. Nor in treating of what I have regarded as knives does it seem convenient first to describe what appear to be the simpler and older forms, inasmuch as there are other forms which in all respects except the shape of the blade so closely resemble some of the socketed sickles described in the last chapter, that they seem almost of necessity to follow immediately in order. The first instrument which I shall cite has sometimes indeed been regarded as a sickle, though it is more properly speaking a curved knife. [Illustration: Fig. 240.—Thorndon. ½] [Illustration: Fig. 241.—Reach Fen. ½] It was found in Wicken Fen, and is now in the Museum of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, the Council of which has kindly permitted me to engrave it as Fig. 239. It has already been figured, but not quite accurately, in the _Archæological Journal_,[727] the rib at the back of the blade being omitted. I am not aware of any other example of this form of knife having been found in the United Kingdom, but a double-edged socketed knife with a curved blade, found in Ireland, is in the Bateman Collection. The ordinary form of socketed knife has a straight double-edged blade, extending from an oval or oblong socket, pierced by one or two holes, through which rivets or pins could pass to secure the haft. These holes are usually at right angles to the axis of the blade, but sometimes in the same plane with it.