254 TRANSLATIONS AND SELECTED ARTICLES. 
by barbarous and savage hordes. Geology had to traverse a similar 
phase, when nothing cou!d be seen in fossils but traces of the deluge, 
These common mistakes have also prevailed in the south of Sweden 
aud in Denmark, countries which abound in antiquities, and in which 
are found in particular numbers of axes and edges of flint. Some saw 
in these but instruments of sacrifice in Pagan times; others went se far 
as to believe these pieces proceeded from the thunderbolt, an origin 
which has also been attributed to certain fossils, such as belemnites. 
An idea can thus be formed of the state in which the question was 
found when the labors of M. Thomsen, Director of the Archeological 
Museum at Copenhagen, and of M. Nilsson, Professor of Zoology at 
the University of Lund im Sweden, commenced. These two illustrious 
veterans of the antiquaries of the North, too experienced to engage 
in the controversies then in vogue, set themselves to compare the anti- 
quities of their countries with the products of industry among the 
people more or less savage of Oceanica and of other regions of the 
globe. This comparison led to a recognition of a remarkable simi- 
larity between the edged objects in flint of the north of Europe and 
the instruments of the modern populations who do not know the use of 
metals. Messrs. Thomsen and Nilsson remarked at the same time, 
that a whole series of northern tombs, characteristic enough, con- 
tained, in addition to the skeletons of the dead and pottery more or © 
less coarse, instruments and arms of stone only, there being no relic 
of metal. They concluded naturally from this, that the first inhabitants 
of Europe had not known the use of metals, and had greatly resembled 
the savages of to-day, at least so far as relates to industry and mate- 
rial life. Another class of graves enclosed edged instruments and arms 
in metal, axes, knives, swords, lance-heads, but they were not made of 
iron or steel: they were of bronze, a mixture of brass and tin. Now, 
if iron had been known, it would certainly have been employed in 
preference to bronze, which is very inferior for all the purposes of 
cutting and carving. It follows then that bronze was known and used 
before iron; which was also brought into use later. Thus, the place 
taken by iron at the present day and fora long time past, with regard 
to industry and civilization in general, had previously been occupied 
by bronze, and, at a sti!l more remote date, by stone. Thus we obtain the 
simple and practical distinction in antiquities of the age of stone, the ago 
of bronze, and the age of iron. ‘This classification, which recals that 
which Werner made of the geological strata into primitive, secondary, 
