To anyone who is acquainted with the elaborate studies[199] made by Scandinavian archæologists on the origin and development of the various forms of fibulæ found in northern Europe it must be a matter of surprise that up to the present no attempt has been made to do the same thing for our own country. With the exception of Dr. Arthur Evans’ paper in the _Archæologia_,[200] absolutely nothing has been written on the subject in England, nor do the curators of our public museums make the faintest attempt to classify the different kinds of fibulæ of the Romano-British period according to their shapes. [199] Hans Hildebrand’s _Industrial Arts of Scandinavia_; Oscar Montelius’ “Spännen från bronsåldern” in the _Antiquarisk Tidskrift för Sverige_; and O. Almagren’s _Studien über norden europäische Fibelformen_. [200] Vol. lv., p. 179. Looked at from a purely mechanical point of view, a fibula, or brooch, belongs to the same class of appliances as an ordinary door-lock; being, in fact, a device for fastening applied to dress. The fibula was probably in its earlier stages evolved from a simple pin by endeavouring to invent some way by which the pin might be prevented from slipping out once it had been inserted in the fabric of the dress. A sufficiently obvious plan for effecting this is to connect the head of the pin with the point by means of a rigid bar sufficiently bent into the shape of an arch to avoid pressing too closely upon the portion of the dress between it and the pin. When fixed in its place the brooch forms a complete ring, so that a locking and unlocking contrivance is necessary in order to enable it to be removed when not in use. The modern safety-pin, which is also one of the most ancient inventions, is perhaps the simplest kind of dress-fastener, and yet it is the parent of the almost endless series of European fibulæ from the Bronze Age to the present time. It can be constructed in the easiest possible manner out of a single piece of metal wire of uniform thickness by making a coil in the middle of its length to act as a spring and a point at one end and a hook at the other. The pointed end is then bent round until it catches in the hook, and the thing is complete. There are two other classes of brooches which do not belong to the safety-pin type or its descendants, namely, (1) the Celtic penannular brooch;[201] and (2) the Northern Bronze Age brooch,[202] which has a pin with a hole through the head enabling it to slide, turn, and move about loosely on the body of the brooch. With these we are not concerned at present. [201] Dr. J. Anderson’s _Scotland in Early Christian Times_, 2nd ser., p. 7. [202] J. J. A. Worsaae’s _Industrial Arts of Denmark_, p. 92. [Illustration: BRONZE FIBULA FROM CLOGHER, CO. TYRONE; NOW IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM SCALE 1/1 LINEAR] [Illustration: LATE-CELTIC BRONZE FIBULA, LOCALITY UNKNOWN; NOW IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM SCALE 1/1 LINEAR]