THE IRON, THE BRONZE, AND THE STONE AGES. 665 



One of many other convincing arguments for the conclusion that 

 iron came into general use later than bronze, is, to my mind, the 

 fact that in Switzerland you find, as in the museum at Berne, 

 bronze bracelets ornamented with beads of iron, and, as in a knife 

 from Morigen, the blade of a cutting instrument made mainly of 

 bronze but similarly inlaid with strips of steel. On this, Desor 

 and Favre (' Le bel Age du Bronze Lacustre,^ 1874, p. 16) remark, 

 * Or pour qy^on ait employe le fer en guise d'ornement il fallait hien 

 qu^on le tint en grande estime et qui il ne fut pas tres commun^ The 

 larger use of iron when a thin blade of it was carried on a handle 

 of bronze, the retention by such iron blades of the leaf-shape of the 

 bronze blades which they displaced from their bronze pommels, and 

 finally the exceedingly rich ornamentation of the pommels of the 

 iron swords found at that most instructive discovery at Hallstatt, 

 are all similarly indications that iron was of later introduction than 

 bronze ; that at first it was the scarcer of the two materials. If, 

 afterwards, iron was made a servant of all work, and bronze was 

 retained simply for the manufacture of ornaments, as by our Anglo- 

 Saxon forefathers, this is but a history which can be paralleled by 

 that of many other household goods ! 



Copper, as distinguished from bronze, is, on a priori grounds, 

 likely to have been discovered and used long before metallic iron. 

 For it is much more abundant in the metallic state in nature, as 

 for example in Siberia, in the Faroe Islands, in many Cornish and 

 in some Welsh mines, in Brazil, Chili, and Peru, and, above all, in 

 large masses near Lake Superior, in North America. And, in 

 addition to being there available and obvious as a red metal — or, 

 indeed, the red metal — copper is malleable and ductile immediately 

 after fusion, and acquires considerable hardness when mixed with 

 other metals. These last five words from the 'Dictionary of 

 Chemistry,' suh voc. ' Copper,' bring us face to face with the 

 question : Where was made the discovery of the advantages to be 

 gained from alloying copper with tin, and so obtaining bronze ? 

 It was of course likely to be made in some district in which the 

 ores of these two metals were to be found in proximity. There are 

 three such areas. Firstly, Cornwall : but as against the claims of 

 our westernmost county are to be set, not only the ratiocinatively 

 weighty words of Caesar as to pigs or ingots of bronze, Aere utuntur 

 importatOj but many materially ponderable arguments in the shape 



