We may also mention the large hollow golden balls of which seven are in the National collection, one in the possession of Mr. H. J. B. Clements, and another in the British Museum. Eleven of these golden balls were found in 1834 at Carrick-on-Shannon.[21] There has been much conjecture as to the use these balls were put to, and it has been suggested that as their large size would render them inconvenient as personal ornaments, they were probably used to decorate a horse. If so they may have been attached to the bridle like the large balls shown on the horses' bridles in the bronze scabbard from Hallstatt, dated La Tene I. See Dechelette, "Manuel d'Archeologie," vol. ii, p. 770. The Golden Peytrell found at Mold, Flintshire, may be instanced to show that gold was sometimes used to decorate horses; and if the gold balls were really used for this purpose, we may well endorse what the author of the "British Museum Bronze-Age Guide" says when he writes: "A discovery of this kind demonstrates in a striking manner the abundance of gold at the end of our Bronze period."[22] [21] Proc. Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxx, Sec. C, p. 450. [22] "British Museum Bronze-Age Guide," p. 150. CLARE FIND Another type of neck-ornaments are the thin gold gorgets with funnel-shaped ends, many of which were found in the great Clare find. These gorgets are quite plain, except for a little ornamentation at the extreme ends near the funnel-shaped extremities. There are five of these objects in the National Collection, and all were found together in the celebrated Clare find. This find--the largest collective one of gold objects ever made in Western Europe--was discovered in making a railway-cutting for the Limerick and Ennis Railway in 1854. A gang of labourers were digging near an old hawthorn-bush, a little distance to the south of the railway bridge in Moghaun north, on the west side of the line of the great fort, and opposite the lough, when they undermined a kind of cist. The fall of one of the containing-stones disclosed a mass of gold ornaments--gorgets, bracelets of all sizes with cup-shaped ends, and a few ingots of gold. The find, from a numerical point of view, far surpassed anything ever made, but none of the objects were highly ornamented or of a special type.