THE BRONZE AXE. 219 



fusibility of metals, and have applied it in time, at first, 

 perhaps, by accident, to the manufacture of that hard 

 alloy. I say Asiatic, because there seems good reason to 

 believe that Asia was the original home of the nascent 

 bronze industry. For a Bronze Age almost necessarily 

 implies a brief preceding age of copper ; and there is no 

 proof of pure copper implements ever having been largely 

 used in Europe, while there is ample proof of their having 

 been used to a very considerable extent in Asia. Hence 

 we may reasonably infer that the art of bronze-making 

 was developed in Asia by a copper-using people, and that 

 when metallurgy was first introduced into Europe the 

 method of mixing the copper with tin had already been 

 perfected. The abundance of tin in the south-eastern 

 islands of Asia renders this view probable; while in 

 Europe there are no tin mines worth mentioning, except 

 in the remotest part of a remote outlying island to wit, 

 in Cornwall. 



Be this as it may, the earliest and simplest fprms of 

 bronze axe with which we are acquainted are profoundly 

 interesting, as casting a flood of light upon the general 

 process of human evolution all the world over. Every 

 new human invention is always at first directly modelled 

 upon the other similar products which have preceded it. 

 There is no really new thing under the sun. For 

 example, the earliest English railway carriages were 

 built on the model of the old stage-coach, only that three 

 stage-coaches, as it were, were telescoped together, side 

 by side the very first bore the significant motto, Tria 

 juncta in uno and it was this preconception of the 

 English coachbuilder that has hampered us ever since 



