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boar, hare, urus, horse, ox, hog, and dog, as well as 

 fragments of pottery. Fire was produced by these men 

 by striking a flint flake against a piece of iron pyrites, as 

 is evident from the discovery of these articles in and 

 around charred remains of fires ; thus a great advance 

 was made in this direction upon the habits of the older 

 inhabitants, who had only been able to procure fire by 

 rapidly turning a piece of wood between their two hands, 

 the point being fixed in a hollow on another piece of 

 wood, so that the great friction which resulted produced 

 heat sufficient to generate flame. 



Following the Bronze Age was the Iron Age, during 

 which period the historic era commenced ; and thus we 

 have not only various discoveries to prove that iron 

 gradually supplanted bronze, but history bears witness to 

 the same truth. The Homeric legends abound with feats 

 performed by heroes who wielded bronze and iron 

 weapons ; and from Hesiod, who wrote nearly five hun- 

 dred years before Herodotus, we learn that iron had 

 already superseded bronze among the Greeks, and that 

 the archaeologists of his day recognised a distinct era of 

 the past as the Age of Bronze. The probability is that 

 the discovery of the mode of separating iron from its 

 ore and turning it into useful articles was made in Asia, 

 from whence it was afterwards introduced into Europe; 

 for we find that at the very first appearance of iron in 

 Britain and France there were iron coins and iron orna- 

 ments in regular use among the people, which articles 

 were no doubt brought by invading tribes of oriental 

 people. In the early or prehistoric portion of the Iron 

 Age the practice of burying the dead at full length 

 first became known in Britain, cremation having always 

 been practised previously. 



Having now arrived at historic times, our inquiry into 

 man's antiquity need not be further continued. For the 

 searcher after truth there only now remains the task of 

 carefully considering the facts here brought forward 

 and comparing the conclusions arrived at with the old 

 orthodox story of the creation of the world and man as 

 found in the Bible. If the story read in the Book of 

 Nature be a true one, then man has lived upon the 

 earth several hundred thousand years, and has passed 



