Notes on bronze sickles : with special reference to those found in Scotland / by John Alexander Smith.

Date:
[1868?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on bronze sickles : with special reference to those found in Scotland / by John Alexander Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    for the purpose of being fixed into a handle of wood, almost like those in use at the present day; and, indeed, some have been found with handles attached to them in this way. One specimen of a sickle has its cutting edge finely serrated. Iron sickles of a closely corresponding character, with rivet-holes through the tang for attaching them to a wooden handle, have been discovered in the peat mosses of the north of Europe. In this rapid enumeration, I have gone over the principal changes that have been observed in the form and character of some at least, if not most, of the ancient varieties of this important agricultural imple- ment, the sickle. From those found in our own country and in Ireland, at once the smallest in size, and difi'ering most in shape from our modern iron sickles, and also, perhaps, among the most ancient examples. Next those of the Swiss lake dwellings, first of bronze, and lastly of iron, some of the latter bringing us down almost to the style and character of the iron sickles in use in our own day; which again, as manual labour becomes more and more valuable, seem before long destined in a great measure to be superseded, or rather, I should say, are already superseded, except in our remoter districts, by the more complicated and powerful reaping machines of the advancing science of improved agriculture.