OF GOLD AN 7 D SILVER. 



This subject has been illustrated in Denmark, 

 by opening many Scandinavian tumuli of very 

 remote ages, from which have been collected 

 specimens of knives, daggers, swords, and im- 

 plements of industry, which are preserved and 

 arranged in the Museum at Copenhagen. There 

 are tools of various kinds formed of flint or 

 other hard stone, in shapes resembling our 

 wedges, axes, chisels, hammers, and knives, 

 which are presumed to have been those first in- 

 vented. There are swords, daggers, and knives, 

 the blades of which are of gold, whilst an edge 

 of iron is formed for the purpose of cutting. 

 Some of the tools and weapons are formed prin- 

 cipally of copper, with edges of iron ; and in 

 many of the implements the profuse application 

 of copper and of gold, when contrasted with the 

 parsimony evident in the expenditure of iron, 

 seems to prove, that at the unknown period, and 

 among the unknown people who raised the tu- 

 muli, which antiquarian research has lately ex- 

 plored, gold, as well as copper, were much more 

 abundant products than iron l . 



Copper, in the more remote ages, was not 

 only commonly, but in some, if not in all, ex- 

 clusively used for money; and at those periods 



1 The author was much gratified, in 1827, by the inspec- 

 tion of the Museum, and by the clear and familiar illustrations 

 of Mr Thompson, who has had the arrangement of the several 

 articles. 



B 2 



