RECENT ANTHROPOLOGY. 153 



It is when hard steel comes in, that weapons both of bronze and 

 wrought iron have to yield, as when the long, soft iron broadswords 

 of the Gauls bent at the first blow against the pikes of Flaminius's 

 soldiers. On the whole, Professor Virchow's remarks in the " Trans- 

 actions of the Berlin Anthropological Society for 1876," on the ques- 

 tion whether it may be desirable to recognize instead of three only 

 two ages, a Stone age and a Metal age, seem to put the matter on a 

 fair footing. Iron may have been known as early as bronze or even 

 earlier, but nevertheless there have been periods in the life of nations 

 when bronze, not iron, has been the metal in use. Thus there is no- 

 thing to interfere with the facts resting on archseological evidence, 

 that in such districts as Scandinavia or Switzerland a Stone age was 

 at some ancient time followed by a Bronze age, and this again by an 

 Iron age. We may notice that the latter change is what has happened 

 in America within a few centuries, where the Mexicans and Peruvians, 

 found by the Spaniards living in the Bronze age, were moved on into 

 the Iron age. But the question is Avhether we are to accept as a 

 general principle in history the doctrine expounded in the poem of 

 Lucretius, that men first used boughs and stones, that then the use of 

 bronze became known, and lastly iron was discovered. As the evi- 

 dence stands now, the priority of the Stone age to the Metal age is 

 more firmly established than ever, but the origin of both bronze and 

 iron is lost in antiquity, and we have no certain proof which came 

 first. 



Passing to another topic of our science, it is satisfactory to see 

 with what activity the comparative study of laws and customs, to 

 which Sir Henry Maine gave a new starting-point in England, is now 

 pursued. The remarkable inquiry into the very foundations of soci- 

 ety in the structure of' the family, set afoot by Bachof en in his " Mut- 

 terrecht," and McLennan in his " Primitive Marriage," is now bringing 

 in every year new material. Mr, L. H. Morgan, who, as an adopted 

 Iroquois, became long ago familiar with the marriage laws and ideas 

 of kinship of uncultured races, so unlike those of the civilized world, 

 has lately made, in his "Ancient Society," a bold attempt to solve the 

 whole difiicult problem of the development of social life. I will not 

 attempt here any criticism of the views of these and other wi-iters on 

 a problem where the last word has certainly not been said. My object 

 in toitching the subject is to mention the curious evidence that can 

 still be given by rude races as to their former social ties, in traditions 

 which will be forgotten in another generation of civilized life, but 

 may still be traced by missionaries and others who know what to seek 

 for. Thus, such inquiry in Polynesia discloses remarkable traces of a 

 prevalent marriage-tie which was at once polygamous and jjolyan- 

 drous, as where a family of brothers were married jointly to a family 

 of sisters ; and I have just noticed in a recent volume on " Native 

 Tribes of South Australia," a mention of a similar state of things oc- 



