TRAI^SACTIOIS'S 



OF THE 



HERTFORDSHIRE IS'ATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



I. 



THE BRONZE AGE. 



Ey Sir John Evans, K.C.B., D.C.L., LL.D., Sc.D., Treas.R.S., 



V.P.S.A., etc. 



The substance of a Lecture delivered at Watford, lith November, 1893. 



PLATES I-III. 



As your President has informed you, I was appealed to in the 

 D30st touching manner to give some kind of an opening lecture at the 

 beginning of the present session of this Society. No subject purely 

 within the province of Natural History seemed available for me, 

 but on looking at the subjects included within the scope of the 

 Society I found that one of them was Pre-histoiic Archaeology, 

 of which you have an official Eecorder. 



Now Pre-historic Archaeology is a comparatively wide term, and 

 embraces all those phases of human civilization which took place 

 prior to the advent of written history in any given country, and I 

 think it is well for any Natural History Society to embrace Pre- 

 historic Archaeology within its scope, for, after all, of all created 

 animals, man claims the first place, and anything that relates to 

 the history and development of man and of human civilization ought 

 to be of interest to all, and specially to those who are students of 

 natural history. 



1 will not apologise in any way for selecting such a subject, but 

 I may say, in the words of an old Roman author, " I am a man, 

 and I regard nothing human as foreign to me," or I may quote 

 one of our English poets, and say, 



" The proper study of mankind is man." 



My lecture will be confined to only one of those periods into 

 which Pre-historic Archaeology has been divided — the lironze 

 Period. The question naturally arises — What do we mean by the 

 Bronze Period ? 



In the first place, what is bronze ? Bronze is an alloy of copper 

 and tin in certain proportions — about nine parts of copper to one of 



VOL. YIII.— PART I. 1 



