Of the forms of decoration used in the Stone Age in this country we know hardly anything, and therefore they will not come within the scope of our investigations. The ornamental patterns of the Bronze Age, as far as we are acquainted with them from a study of the sepulchral urns, implements, personal ornaments, and sculptured cists and chambered tumuli, are of a very simple description, consisting chiefly of chevrons, concentric circles, and rudely drawn spirals. The latter may have been the forerunners of the beautifully designed volutes of the Iron Age, the nearest approach to perfection being on the sculptured slab at the entrance to the New Grange tumulus, Co. Meath, and on the slabs forming the sides of a chambered cairn at Clover Hill, Co. Sligo. When we come down to the Iron Age we find a very beautiful and refined system of decoration applied to bronze objects, such as hand-mirrors, shields, helmets, sword-sheaths, and horse-trappings, the leading _motif_ of which is the divergent, or trumpet-shaped spiral. This style of decoration has received the name Late-Celtic in this country, and La Tène on the Continent. No one can fail to be struck with the similarity between the Late-Celtic spiral ornament and that found in the early Irish MSS., the patterns in some cases being absolutely identical. It is thus possible to trace this particular element in the decorative art of the early Christian period to a native Pagan source. Late-Celtic objects have been found in all parts of the United Kingdom, but probably the style of decoration only survived into Christian times in Ireland, although there is really no reason why it should not have done so elsewhere—in the north of Scotland, for instance, which was quite as much cut off from civilisation as Ireland during the Saxon conquests. The closest resemblance between the spiral decoration of the Pagan period and that of the Christian period is to be found on the discoidal ornaments with patterns in _champlevé_ enamel, forming the attachments of the handles of certain bronze bowls, several examples of which have been discovered from time to time in different parts of England.[442] [442] _Archæologia_, vol. lvi., p. 43. I believe that the only element in early Christian decorative art in this country that can be traced to a native Pagan source is the divergent spiral. It has been suggested that the Irish and Saxon designers derived some of their ideas from the Roman pavements, but I can see nothing in the decoration of the MSS. on monuments of the pre-Norman period that can be fairly attributed to a Romano-British origin.