In a work treating of the bronze antiquities of Britain we must, however, first consider the opinion of British antiquaries, by whom the word celt had been completely adopted as the name for bronze hatchets and axes by the middle of the last century. Borlase,[112] in his “Antiquities of Cornwall,” 1754, speaking of some “spear-heads” of copper mentioned by Leland, says that by the spear-heads he certainly meant those which we (from Begerus) now call Celts. Leland’s words are as follows:[113]—“There was found of late Yeres syns Spere Heddes, Axis for Warre, and Swerdes of coper wrapped up in lynid scant perished nere the Mount in S. Hilaries Paroch in Tynne Works;” so that it by no means follows but that he was right in speaking of spear-heads, for if there were any celts among the objects discovered they were probably termed battle-axes by Leland. Camden makes mention of the same find:[114] “At the foote of this mountaine (St. Michael’s Mount), within the memorie of our Fathers, whiles men were digging up of tin, they found Spear-heads, axes, and swordes of brasse wrapped in linnen, such as were sometimes found within the forrest of Hercinia in Germanie, and not long since in our Wales. For evident it is by the monuments of ancient Writers that the Greeks, the Cimbrians, and the Britans used brazen weapons, although the wounds given with brasse bee lesse hurtfull, as in which mettall there is a medicinable vertue to heale, according as _Macrobius_ reporteth out of Aristotle. But happily that age was not so cunning in devising meanes to mischiefe and murthers as ours is.” Hearne, the editor of Leland’s “Itinerary,” took a less philosophical view of these instruments. Writing to Thoresby[115] in 1709, he maintains that some old instruments of bronze found near Bramham Moor, Yorkshire, are not the heads of British spears; on the contrary, they are Roman, not axes used in their sacrifices, nor the heads of spears and javelins, but chisels which were used to cut and polish the stones in their tents. Such instruments were also used in making the Roman highways and in draining their fens. Plot[116] also, at a somewhat earlier date, asserted a Roman origin for bronze celts, which he regarded as the heads of bolts, founding his opinion mainly on two, which are engraved in the Museum Moscardi. These, which are reproduced in the _Archæologia_, vol. v. Pl. VIII. 18 and 19, are of the palstave form, and were regarded by Moscardo[117] as the heads of great darts to be thrown from a catapult. A flat celt found in Staffordshire,[118] Plot takes to be the head of a Roman _securis_ with which the _Popæ_ slew their sacrifices. Rowland,[119] in his “Mona Antiqua Restaurata,” 1723, suggested that looped palstaves fastened by a thong to a staff might be used as war flails.