XXXVI. 



ON THE THEEE PERIODS KNOWN AS THE IRON, 

 THE BRONZE, AND THE STONE AGES. 



I HOPE that in the observations I am about to submit I shall 

 make plain the differences which have enabled antiquaries to divide 

 pre-historic times into two principal divisions, namely, the Stone 

 and the Bronze ages — and to draw a tolerably sharp line of 

 demarcation between these periods — and the Iron age, in which 

 we are now living, and to which the interment examined this day 

 in Oakley Park belonged. 



It has been said very truly that *Les divisions des etres, des 

 objets, des sciences sont la source la plus commune des erreurs de 

 I'esprit humain ; ' and naturalists regard the aphorism ^ Nature is 

 not so strict a classifier as man' as being one of their common- 

 places. And I do not say that no one of the three ages has been 

 overlapped at either end by another, nor can I accept all the 

 minute subdivisions of these periods which some specialists have 

 urged upon us. But gradations at botb ends of any series should 

 not prevent us from seeing, acknowledging, and holding, that it 

 may be distinct enough in its middle; and if old forms of imple- 

 ments and weapons are enabled by isolation as regards locality to 

 live into contemporaneity with newer ones, that is only what 

 happens with older forms of animal and vegetable life which 

 isolation of the same kind often preserve as living fossils, but 

 without for a moment making us doubt the propriety of referring 

 them to an age distinct from ours. 



Let us begin with the Iron Age, with the age of whicb we 

 know most, and so work our way gradually upwards and backwards 

 through the Bronze into the Stone periods. The drawings I ex- 

 hibit represent the implements and weapons used by the Homans 



