Fig. 151.—Bronze Stud.
Fig. 152.—Bronze Rivet.
Fig. 153. Fig. 154. Fig. 155.
Bronze Circlets.
Touchstones would appear, from their make, to have been worn about the person, several being pierced with a hole, seemingly for attachment of a string. Sir W. Wilde remarks that they have been found both flat and four-sided, and with and without perforation. They are formed generally of black Lydian stone or of jasper, either material being suitable for gold-testing. Lydian stone, or black chert, is “an impure flint, found in the central portions of the carboniferous limestone of Ireland, and at the base of the Kilkenny coal formation. It is of a dull dark colour, approaching to black; is more opaque, brittle, and stone-like, than flint; never possesses the same translucency, and does not so readily chip into conchoidal fragments: but, next to flint, it is one of the hardest of the siliceous rocks, and hence was used occasionally for forming tools and weapons by the inhabitants of those districts where flint was rare. Lydian stone, ‘Lapis Lydius,’ or, ‘Lapis Hibernicus,’ as it was denominated by the old Dutch writer De Boot, so long ago as 1647, is the true touchstone of the ancients.”