plumed (and sometimes crested) helmets, and cuirasses of leather,
bronze, or chain-mail. The national weapons of offence were darts,
pikes (sometimes with prongs--the origin of Britannia's trident), and
broadswords; bows and arrows being more rarely used. Both Diodorus
Siculus [v. 30] and Strabo [iv. 197] describe this equipment, and
specimens of all the articles have, at one place or another, been
found in British interments.[42] The arms are often richly worked and
ornamented, sometimes inlaid with enamel, sometimes decorated with
studs of red coral from the Mediterranean.[43] The shields, being of
wood, have perished, but their circular bosses of iron still remain.
The chariots, which formed so special a feature of British militarism,
were also of wood, painted, like the shields, and occasionally
ironclad.[44] The iron may have been from the Sussex fields. We know
that in Caesar's day rings of this metal were one of the forms of
British currency, so that before his time the Britons must have
attained to the smelting of this most intractable of metals.



SECTION F.

Celtic types--"Roy" and "Dhu"--Gael--Silurians--Loegrians--Basque
peoples--Shifting of clans--Constitutional disturbances--Monarchy
--Oligarchy--Demagogues--First inscribed coins.

F. 1.--Our earliest records point to the existence among the Celtic
tribes in Britain of the two physical types still to be found amongst
them; the tall, fair, red-haired, blue-eyed Gael, whom his clansmen
denominate "Roy" (the Red), and the dark complexion, hair and eyes,
usually associated with shorter stature, which go with the designation