220 THE BRONZE AXE. 



with our hateful 'compartments,' instead of the com- 

 modious and comfortable open American saloon carriages. 

 So, too, the earliest firearms were modelled on the stock 

 of the old cross-bow, and the earliest earthenware pots 

 and pans were shaped like the still more primitive gourds 

 and calabashes. It need not surprise us, therefore, to 

 find that the earliest metal axes of which we have any 

 knowledge were directly moulded on the original shape 

 of the stone tomahawk. 



Such a copper hatchet, cast in a mould formed by a 

 polished neolithic stone celt, was found in an early 

 Etruscan tomb, and is still preserved in the Museum at 

 Berlin. See how natural this process would be. For, in 

 the first place, the primitive workman, knowing already 

 only one form of axe, the stone tomahawk, would natur- 

 ally reproduce it in the new material, without thinking 

 what improvements in shape and design the malleability 

 and fusibility of the metal would render possible or easy. 

 But, more than that, the idea of coating the polished 

 stone axe with plastic clay, and thereby making a mould 

 for the molten metal, would be so very simple that even 

 the neolithic savage, already accustomed to the manufac- 

 ture of coarse pottery upon natural shapes, could hardly 

 fail to think of it. As a matter of fact, he did think of 

 it : for celts of bronze or copper, cast in moulds made 

 from stone hatchets, have been found in Cyprus by 

 General di Cesnola, on the site of Troy by Dr. Schlie- 

 mann, and in many other assorted localities by less 

 distinguished but equally trustworthy archaeologists. 



To the neolithic hunter, herdsman, and villager this 

 progress from the stone to the metal axe probably seemed 



