Wilde has inferred from the large size of the rivets, some being 1½ inches in length and nearly 1 inch across the burr or head, that they must have been attached to massive metal handles, of which, however, no fragments have been preserved. If this view had been correct, the disappearance of the handles would be a remarkable circumstance; but the large rivets appear rather intended for securing the blades to wooden shafts, the disappearance of which from ordinary decay is exactly what might be expected. In one instance there are large conical washers or broad rings of bronze 1¼ inches in diameter beneath the rivet-heads, and these in the case of a metal handle would have been superfluous. Wilde appears to me to have fallen into another error with respect to the antiquity of this form of weapon.[980] Arguing from the fact that many of the specimens are formed either of red bronze or of pure copper, he thinks it probable that, like the celts of that material, they are of immense antiquity. And in another place he says that their antiquity may be gathered from the fact of many being of copper, the use of which metal invariably preceded that of bronze. As I have already had occasion to observe, it is perfectly true that many of these blades have the appearance of being made of copper, but the absence of tin in their composition has not as yet been proved. Even were they of pure copper the form and character of the blades show them to be derivatives from the dagger, as the dagger itself sprang from the simpler knife; and the cause for using a less proportion of tin, or indeed none of that metal in them, appears to me to have been the wish to make them less brittle than if they had been of bronze. A weapon used as a battle-axe would not be less deadly from having a somewhat duller cutting edge than if formed of bronze, and should it get bent in an encounter, the straightening of it might quickly be effected, while the loss of a blade by its breaking would be irreparable. I have elsewhere contended that the Hungarian perforated double-ended axes (like pick-axes) of copper, with but little or no tin in them, were made of this material, not because tin was unknown, but because the ductile and malleable copper was found better adapted for certain purposes than the more fragile bronze. In the same manner copper rather than brass sets or punches are in use among engineers at the present day, when an intermediate piece of metal is required to convey the blows of a hammer to an iron key or other object which would be injured by receiving the blows direct.