THE DAWN OF METALLURGY. 297 
pointed out, these very interesting, diminutive instruments appear 
to be characteristic of a particular race or people, whose migration 
may be traced by the various sites at which they have been found ; 
and by the light of MM. Siret’s remarkable discoveries in Spain, it 
would appear as if the fabricators may be identified with the earliest 
workers in copper in Southern and Western Hurope, a race which, 
emanating, possibly, from Central Asia, penetrated into India, and 
also migrated and spread out through Syria to the Crimea and 
along the fertile regions of the Mediterranean to Spain, Portugal, 
France, and probably eveninto England. At any rate, they afford a 
clue to the home of the early metal-workers which may hereafter be 
followed up, as these forms are so distinctive in character as to afford 
almost as good evidence as the occurrence of a particular kind of 
pottery or other object: hence I have thought them of sufficient 
importance in relation to the discoveries in 8.H. Spain to which the 
author alludes in his excellent paper, to make these remarks before the 
Institute, and as they may probably afford him and others a line of 
investigation which may be useful. It would be remarkable, as con- 
firming the hypothesis I have suggested, if the carnelian beads found 
by MM. Siret should be proved to be made from the Indian variety, 
which is harder and in some other respects differs from the ordinary 
red carnelian, MM. de Lisle have also discovered diminutive im- 
plements of precisely the same forms, crescent, trapezoidal, trian- 
gular, and finely-worked spikelet or lancelet, instruments, at Begrol 
and Cléons (Loire Inférieure), drawings of which have been kindly 
furnished to me by Mr. Charles Seidler, late of Nantes, under 
whose fostering care and enterprise the very interesting and im- 
portant collection of prehistoric and anthropological objects now 
possessed by that city was accumulated. MM. Siret’s discovery 
of stone implements of late Neolithic age associated with objects of 
copper and bronze showing that metal was then coming into use, is 
an important one, and goes beyond the well-known fact that stone 
was employed in arrow-heads, &c., long after the introduction of 
bronze and even iron in localities where less civilisation existed. The 
hypothesis of the Eastern origin of the earliest metal workers in 
Europe is supported through other lines of investigation. The 
disposal of the dead by cremation, and the employment of cinerary 
urns, to which Mr. Magens Mello has alluded, appears to have been 
a custom characteristic of the bronze-using race, which is confirmed 
by the discoveries of MM. Siret, a practice which was not in yogue 
‘with the earlier Neolithic people, who interred their dead often in a 
