Iron swords of the same general character as those of bronze have been found in the ancient cemetery at Hallstatt and elsewhere. Those from Hallstatt[1133] are identical in character with the bronze swords from the same locality. In one instance the hilt and pommel of an iron sword are in bronze; in another the pommel alone; the hilt-plate of iron being flat, and provided with rivets exactly like those of the bronze swords. In others the pommel is wanting. I have a broken iron sword from this cemetery, with the hilt-plate perfect, and having three bronze rivets still in it, and the holes for two others at the pommel end. The blade has a central rounded rib along it like Fig. 345, but with a small bead on either side. I have a beautiful bronze sword from the same locality, on the blade of which are two small raised beads on either side of the central rib, and in the spaces between them a threefold wavy line punched in or engraved. In this instance a tang has passed through the hilt, that was formed of alternate blocks of bronze and of some substance that has now perished, possibly ivory. A magnificent iron sword from Hallstatt, now in the Vienna Museum, has the hilt and pommel formed of ivory inlaid with amber. The late Celtic iron swords found in Britain have been described by Mr. A. W. Franks, F.R.S., in an exhaustive paper in the _Archæologia_,[1134] in which also the reader will find many interesting particulars of analogous swords found in continental countries. Several iron swords have been found in France with flat hilt-plates and rivets exactly of the same character as those of the bronze swords. Nine have been discovered in tumuli at Cosne, Magny Lambert, and elsewhere in the department of Côte d’Or. Others have been found at Cormoz, Ain; and at Gédinne, in Belgium. There can be but little doubt that M. Alexandre Bertrand[1135] is right in assigning the French examples to the fourth or fifth century B.C., and in regarding them as direct descendants from the bronze swords of ordinary type. He adduces, also, the remarkable fragment of an iron sword with a bronze hilt found in the Lac de Bienne, which is in exact imitation of a bronze sword with ribs on the blade, as an additional proof that these early iron swords are the reproductions, pure and simple, of those in bronze, and fabricated from the metal then recently introduced into the West. How far back in time the use of bronze swords in Gaul may have extended it is difficult to say, but the varieties in their types testify to a lengthened use before they began to be superseded by those of iron. I must, however, now describe the sheaths by which these blades were protected. CHAPTER XIII. SCABBARDS AND CHAPES.