of the second century than in those of earlier date. Thus, in Germany they are very much more numerous at Hofheim than in the later Limes forts. The examples now to be studied do not present any rare or unusual designs. There is not a single brooch among them to which parallels cannot be found in Britain or on the Rhine. There is not one which could be claimed as the invention of some early craftsman at Newstead. Each and all of them have reached the forms in which we find them, by gradual processes of evolution, and they can consequently be to some extent arranged in homogeneous groups.
First in the series may be placed a specimen of the brooch known as the 'poor man's fibula' (Plate LXXXV., Fig. 1). It was found at the lowest level, in clearing out the Principia. It is made of a single piece of bronze wire, one end of which is twisted into a spiral spring and pin, while. the other is flattened out to form a catch. Such fibulae were common at Hofheim, abandoned about A.D. 60. The present example is thus interesting as representing a survival of a very early type, which must have continued in use side by side with many much more highly developed forms which were really its own descendants. Probably Fig. 2 is also early. It appears to belong to the class known in Germany as 'Augen'-fibulae. A type closely resembling it occurs at Vindonissa.
The exposed spiral spring is characteristic of the older forms of fibulae wherever they are found. As the evolution of a fibula type proceeds, the component parts tend to increase, and the spiral spring is covered over or even disappears entirely, giving place to a hinge. Several well-known types passed through such a process in different parts of Europe at different periods. The fibula shown in Plate LXXXV., Fig. 3, offers an illustration of this tendency, the upper end of the bow having been split to form a covering for the spring. The spring is of course made of a piece of bronze wire, one end of which forms the pin, while the other end is brought back over the coils and bent across above them, passing through a small loop which is fixed into the head of the brooch by a stud. The actual stud has in this case disappeared, but it probably fitted into the small hole which is still discernible. As we shall see from some of the later types, this stud was destined to become in time a purely ornamental feature.
Figs. 4 and 5 obviously represent a closely related pair of brooches. Both forms are met with on the Continent as well as in Britain. Fig. 4, which is perhaps the earlier type, has its spiral spring still uncovered, the
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