I must confess that I regard this view of the smallness of the hilts as being somewhat exaggerated. My own hand is none of the smallest, and yet where the bronze hilts of the Danish and Hungarian swords have been preserved I have no difficulty in finding room to clasp them. The part of the hilt where it expands to embrace the base of the blade was, I think, probably intended to be within the grasp of the hand, and not to be beyond it as a guard. In the case of some of the short dagger-like weapons it seems possible that the projecting rim, which forms a kind of pommel at the end of the hilt, was intended to rest between the fourth and the little finger, and thus to assist in its being grasped firmly when in use as a stabbing weapon. When the plates of horn or wood, which, as we shall subsequently see, once covered the hilt portion of the sword, have perished, it is hard to realise what was the exact form of the hilt; but it is quite evident that we must not assume that because the bare bronze does not fill the hand so as to give it a good grip, the same was the case when it had a plate of some other material on each face, which also possibly projected beyond the sides. There is, moreover, one peculiarity about the hilt-plates of these swords which I have often pointed out by word of mouth, but which I think has not as yet been noticed in print. It is that there is generally, though not universally, a proportion between the length of the blade and the length of the hilt-plate; long sword blades having as a rule long hilt-plates, and short sword blades short hilt-plates. So closely is this kind of proportion preserved, that the outline of a large sword on the scale of one-sixth would in some cases almost absolutely correspond with that of one which was two-thirds of its length, if drawn on the scale of one-fourth. This relative proportion between the length and size of a blade and its handle is by no means restricted to the swords of the Bronze Period, but prevails also among various tools, such as the saws and chisels of the present day. If, for instance, we were to argue from the saw-handles in a carpenter’s shop as to the size of the hands of the carpenters, we should soon find ourselves in difficulties. The handle of an ordinary hand-saw is sufficiently large to admit the hand of any one short of a giant, while the orifice in the handle of a small keyhole-saw will not admit more than a couple of fingers, and the handles of saws of intermediate size range between these two extremes. This fact suffices to inculcate caution in arguing from the hilt-plates of the bronze swords as to the size of the hands of those who used them. It is a question which will be more safely determined on osteological than archæological evidence; but, owing to the remarkable absence of bronze swords from the interments in our barrows, it may be some time before a sword and the bones of the hand that wielded it are found in juxtaposition.