As to the uses of celts, Borlase cites the various opinions of the learned, and observes that if they had not been advanced by men of learning it would be scarce excusable to mention some of them, much less to refute them. They had been taken for heads of walking staffs, for chisels to cut stone withal (as such instruments must have been absolutely necessary in making the great Roman roads), as tools with which to engrave letters and inscriptions, as the sickles with which the Druids cut the sacred mistletoe, and as rests to support the _lituus_ of the Roman augurs. After all, however, Borlase himself comes to the somewhat lame conclusion that they formed the head or arming of the spear, the javelin, or the arrow, and thinks that Mr. Rowland comes the nearest to the truth of any author he has read, when he says that they might be used with a string to draw them back, and something like a feather to guide them in flying towards the enemy, and calls them sling-hatchets. He concedes, however, that for such weighty heads there was no occasion for feathers, and as for slinging of hatchets against an enemy, he does not remember any instance, ancient or modern. Some of the celts, moreover, are too light to do any execution if thrown from the hand. The Rev. Mr. Lort,[123] who communicated some observations on celts to the Society of Antiquaries in 1776, differed from Dr. Borlase, and regarded a large flat celt found in the Lower Furness as manifestly designed to be held in the hand only, and much better adapted to the chipping of stone than to any other use which has hitherto been found out for it. He will not, however, take upon himself to assert that some socketed celts, which he also describes, were designed for the same purpose. Appended to the paper by Mr. Lort are notices of several bronze celts, which at different times had been brought under the notice of the Society of Antiquaries. Some which had been exhibited in 1735 were regarded by Mr. Benjamin Cooke and Mr. Collinson as Gaulish weapons used by the Roman auxiliaries at the time of Claudius. Mr. Cooke, however, took them to be axes, and mounted one of them on a shaft, citing Homer as his authority for doing so, and speaking of the ἀξίνην ἔυχαλκον.