30 A. Morlot on Archeology. 
virgin forests now flourishing upon the remains of that antique 
civilization, of which the modern Indians have not even retained 
combination, and where also traces of a still earlier copper-age are 
likely to be found. 
An apparently serious objection might be started here by 
raising the question, how mines could be worked without the 
aid of steel. This however is sufficiently explained by the fact, 
that the hardest rocks can be easily managed through the agency 
of fire. By lighting a large fire against a rock, the latter is rent 
and fissured, so as considerably to facilitate its quarrying. This 
method was frequently employed when wood was cheaper, and is 
even practised at the present day in the mines of the Rammels- 
berg in Germany, where it facilitates the working of a rock of 
extreme hardness. 
_ That metal of dingy and sorry appearance, but more truly pre- 
cious than gold or the diamond—iron—at length appears, givin, 
a wonderful impulse to the progressive march of mankind, an 
characterising the third great phase in the development of Euro- 
pean civilization, very fobs nee called the tron-age. 
Our planet never produces iron in its metallic or virgin state, for 
a 
f 
| 
the simple reason, that it is too liable to oxydation. But among — 
the aerolites there are some composed of pure iron with a little 
nickel, which alters neither the appearance nor sensibly the quali- 
ties of the metal. Thus the celebrated meteoric iron discovered by 
pe in Siberia was found by the neighboring blacksmiths to 
malleable in a cold state.* Meteoric iron has even been 
* Pallas: Voyages en Russie, Paris, 1793, iv, 595. There was but one mass of 
this meteoric iron ; it weighed 1600 pounds. 
