672 ON THE THREE PERIODS KNOWN AS 



with interments of the Stone Age. These barrows were in a 

 district (that of Castle-Cary) the surface strata of which are low 

 down in the lower secondary formations, yet the worked flints, and 

 they not only * strike-a-lights ' or ' thumb-flints,' but scrapers, were 

 as abundant as they might have been in a tumulus upon a chalk 

 down. Their varied quality and great quantity render it impos- 

 sible to think that they are in such a district merely thrown in 

 ceremonially, and are evidence to the effect that, though tin and 

 copper were available enough, and side by side^ at no greater distance 

 than Cornwall, those particular deposits had not then been utilised 

 for the manufacture in question. 



Let us now pass to the Stone Age. I have not the knowledge 

 requisite for subdividing the Bronze Age into distinct periods ; and 

 looking at the question in the light which played over the Somer- 

 setshire hills, when I was employed, as just now stated, upon them, 

 I doubt whether any subdivision of it, as it was in England, can 

 be justified. A Copper Age, no doubt, must have existed, and did 

 exist, in America, antecedently to the Age of copper alloyed with 

 tin ; but there is no evidence that it ever existed in England, at 

 least. More may be said, on the authority of Polybius and on other 

 evidence, for the subdivision of the Iron Age into two periods, one 

 of which, the earlier of course, had not learnt the art of tempering 

 iron, whilst to it a second, ' the age of steel, succeeded then.' But 

 as regards the Stone Age we have no need to have recourse to mere 

 probable arguments and a priori evidence. There is no doubt what- 

 ever that the Stone Age is divisible into two great periods upon 

 several principles, which, however, make their several sections in 

 the same plane. We can look at a stone weapon and ask ourselves 

 one or other of these three questions ; firstly, was it intended to be 

 used in the hand, or used as hafted ? Secondly, has it been polished 

 and ground up, or has it been left simply chipped over with con- 

 choidal fractures ? Thirdly, was it found in company with pottery, 

 however rude, or was it found in some river gravel-bed, in company 

 with no other evidence of human handiwork, but with the bones 

 of mammoth and rhinoceros ? If a stone weapon is so fashioned 

 that we can see that it was intended to be stuck into a handle or 

 haft, and if it is polished, we may be sure that it belonged to a 

 later than the mammoth period in this country, and that it may 

 be spoken of as Neolithic in contradistinction to the Palseolithic 



