656 BEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



spired by those of au Archaic Gallo-Ronian god, he of the Hammer, 

 which is believed to have had a high antiquity in that country. 



The Bronze Agk, 



The scene in PI clx represents a primitive foundry. Under a great 

 rock, protected from the wind by a hedge of dead brush and twigs, a 

 molder and his assistant are engaged in casting implements of bronze. 

 These two personages represent the introduction of bronze which is be- 

 lieved to have come from the Occident. The assistant is of the type of 

 what is called the Nutons in Belgium and comes from the Trou of that 

 name, being one of the caverns of the Lesse, near the town of Furfooz. 

 This cavern contains a great number of skeletons of men belonging to 

 two distinct types. The Nutons are dwarfs, and this is intended to rep- 

 resent the smaller and inferior of the two races. The master molder is 

 of the type of the most ancient Ligurians who occupied the territory on 

 the shores of the Mediterranean in what was ancient Liguria, say from 

 Toulon to Genoa. The two figures are dressed in a loose costume of 

 leather. The master founder pours the metal from a crucible, held by 

 means of a large pair of tongs made of bronze, which is a reproduction 

 of such an implement discovered in one of these foundries and now at 

 the Musee of St. Germain. The metal is represented as boiling in the 

 mold. The crucible and mold are copied after originals in St. Germain. 

 By the side of the workmen are pieces of bronze, broken ready to be 

 melted, while on the other side a dozen or more new hatchets are laid 

 out apparently ready for sale. 



The amount of work bestowed upon this, as well as the other group, 

 in order to make them faithful representations of originals, must have 

 been great, and their success is a high testimony to the gentlemen who 

 conceived and executed it. 



I may be pardoned for a few words explanatory of the extent of this 

 industry and the age or civilization to which it belonged, by which I 

 tell that there have been discovered in France alone fifty-seven such 

 foundries, that the implements of bronze, broken and made ready for 

 melting, number among the thousands, the implements found among 

 the ten thousands, and the new objects deposited in caches, evidently 

 never used and ready for sale, have been found in many places. The 

 great foundry at Bologna had 14,000 pieces of broken implements for 

 a like purpose, and weighing several thousand pounds. 



The Iron Age. 



Two. men, life-size, were at work with the forge, beating and ham- 

 mering, working the iron. One, the assistant, helper he is called in 

 the trade, blew the bellows, the other was the master- workman. The 

 bellows consisted of two skin bags with a bit of iron pipe or tube tied 

 in the mouth of each laid flat upon the ground, the two nozzles coming 

 together. The alternate motion of these two bags like the working of 

 an accordeon kept a continuous stream of air flowing from the (one or 

 the other) nozzles which fed the fire on the ground and so heated the 



