﻿Address. 405 



The intimate connection of ArchiJBology with other 

 sciences is in no case so evident as with respect to 

 Geology, for when considering subjects such as those 

 which I shall presently discuss, it is almost impossible to 

 say where the one science ends and the other begins. 



By the application of geological methods many archaeo- 

 logical questions relating even to subjects on the borders 

 of the historical period have been satisfactorily solved. A 

 careful examination of the limits of the area over which 

 its smaller coins are found has led to the position of 

 many an ancient Greek city being accurately ascertained : 

 while in England it has only been by treating the coins of 

 the Ancient Britons, belonging to a period before the 

 Eoman occupation, as if they were actual fossils, that the 

 territories under the dominion of the various kings and 

 princes who struck them have been approximately deter- 

 mined. In arranging the chronological sequence of these 

 coins, the evolution of their types — a process almost as 

 remarkable, and certainly as well defined, as any to be 

 found in nature — has served as an efficient guide. I may 

 venture to add that the results obtained from the study of 

 the morphology of this series of coins were published ten 

 years before the appearance of Darwin's great work on 

 the " Origin of Species." 



When we come to the consideration of the relics of the 

 Early Iron and Bronze Ages, the aid of Chemistry has of 

 necessity to be invoked. By its means we are able to 

 determine whether the iron of a tool or weapon is of 

 meteoritic or volcanic origin, or has been reduced 

 from iron-ore, in which case considerable knowledge of 

 metallurgy would be involved on the part of those who 

 made it. With bronze antiquities the nature and extent 

 of the alloys combined with the copper may throw light 

 not only on their chronological position, but on the 

 sources whence the copper, tin, and other metals of which 

 they consist were originally derived. I am not aware of 



