CHAP, x.] THE LATE AGE OF BRONZE IN FRANCE. 381 



daggers, or lances. The introduction of personal orna- 

 ments, and especially of glass, probably of Egyptian or 

 Phoenician manufacture, before other articles, which may 

 be presumed to have been used in the country where 

 glass was manufactured, is what might have been antici- 

 pated from the past experience of the contact of peoples 

 in different stages of civilisation. At the present time, 

 the natives of Africa prefer articles which minister to 

 their vanity to those of practical use, and glass beads 

 are used as a medium of exchange by the traders, and 

 pass from hand to hand into regions far beyond those 

 into which our weapons and implements penetrate. 

 This " period of transition " of M. Chantre is the neces- 

 sary result of the intercourse of the inhabitants of 

 France and Switzerland, at the close of the Neolithic 

 age, with the civilised peoples south of the Alps, and 

 it may be taken to be merely the first sign of their 

 influence, subsequently to be felt in " the age of Bronze, 

 properly so called." 



From M. Chantre's observations it is evident that in 

 France, as in Britain, cremation was practised side by 

 side with inhumation. 



The association of Neolithic implements with bronze 

 articles is equally noticeable in some of the pile-dwellings 

 of the Swiss and French lakes, and there is ample proof 

 that the principal result of the introduction of bronze 

 into those regions was the improvement of the civilisa- 

 tion which had existed long before. 



Late Age of Bronze in France and Switzerland. 



The pile-dwellings of France and Switzerland, such 

 more particularly as those in the lakes of Bourget, 



