Although the simple leaf-shaped spear-heads from the British Isles present close analogies with those from the other parts of Europe, yet for the most part those of the other types, with loops to the sockets, with openings in the blade, or of the barbed class last described, present peculiarities of their own. Several of these types appear, indeed, to have been evolved in Britain or in Ireland, and the differences they exhibit from the ordinary continental types are more marked than in any other class of bronze weapons. Though loops are such a common adjunct to the socketed celts of other countries, yet looped palstaves are comparatively rare abroad. At the same time, as will have been seen, hardly any examples of looped spear-heads from foreign countries can be cited, while in Britain, and more especially in Ireland, they are very abundant. This fact, in whatever way it is to be accounted for, affords a most conclusive argument against assigning a Roman origin for our bronze weapons; a looped spear-head, so far as I am aware, never having been discovered in Italy, and but very rarely even in Gaul. The spear-heads with the small apertures in the blade appear also to be of an indigenous type. Some of the iron spear-heads from Hallstatt and elsewhere have been made in imitation of those in bronze, and have been welded along the whole length of their sockets in a manner which displays the highest skill in the smiths. But, unlike the iron palstaves and socketed celts, none of the spear-heads are provided with a loop. In later times the sockets of the iron spear-heads were left with an open slit along them, a method of manufacture which produced an equally serviceable weapon, and involved far less trouble. As to the position in time which spear-heads occupy in the Bronze Age, it is probable that it is towards the close rather than the beginning of that period. Not only are spear-heads almost, if not quite, absent from our barrows, but the skill involved in producing implements so thin and so truly cored could only have been acquired after long practice in casting. The objects to be considered in the next chapter are also of comparatively late date. CHAPTER XV. SHIELDS, BUCKLERS, AND HELMETS. HAVING now described the various weapons of offence of which in early times bronze formed the material, it will be well to examine the arms of defence fabricated from the same metal, and presumably of the same or nearly the same age.