10 



metals, and the alloying of copper with tin, — steps of the very 

 highest import in the early history of civilisation. 



A consideration of the high state of civilisation reached by 

 a race that seemed to have preceded the Egyptians led Professor 

 Boulger into a disquisition of the possibility of there being a 

 copper age preceding what is universally recognised as the 

 bronze age. Gold was a metal known to the earliest of men, 

 and it seemed probable that they considered copper equally 

 valuable, if not the same thing. The Lecturer quoted Mr. 

 Gladstone as looking upon a word in Homer usually interpreted 

 as bronze as meaning copper, and he referred to other data as 

 proving that at one time copper was the chief metal in use. 

 Then there came the discovery of tin, and by some accidental 

 circumstance, probably a big forest fire, man discovered that the 

 metal could be obtained from the ore by fire, and that it could 

 be alloyed with copper to make that much harder compound 

 known as brass. Incidentally the Lecturer said that though the 

 Phoenicians may have obtained casual supplies of tin from 

 Britain, they probably obtained most of it from Mashonaland. 

 However it came about, this discovery of the art of alloying 

 tin with copper marked an important epoch in the history of 

 mankind, since wath the coming of bronze man passed from 

 barbarism to civilisation. 



WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15th, 1899. 



Mr. EDWARD A. MARTIN, F.G.S. 



TO illustrate his lecture, Mr. Martin made use of a large 

 number of well-executed lantern slides, mostly from photo- 

 graphs, and the lecture resolved itself as much into a description 

 of the pictures, as the pictures were illustrative of the lecture. 

 Mr. Martin impressed upon his hearers the great value to 

 naturalists of Gilbert White's one book, and he deprecated the 

 fact that it was so far from being appreciated now-a-days as it 

 deserved. Gilbert White might really be termed the father of 

 natural history, and, though the discoveries of later day 

 scientists have made some of his book out-of-date, there still is a 

 great portion of it that has not yet been superseded. Even 



