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accessible, wood, bone, or stone, of which the two former 
could not be worked to a sufficiently sharp cutting edge, and 
wanted the important quality of weight, so that stone, easily 
obtained, and not difficult to be shaped, was decidedly prefer- 
able to the others, and was the only material which could, for 
such purposes, be made of any real utility. But this system 
of periods rests upon a theory, if not openly avowed, at least 
implicated, that at any given times the whole population was 
in a uniform state of civilisation, possessed a uniform facility 
of obtaining whatever materials were attainable, and went 
through a uniform progress, in which I do not believe, except 
in regard to people who are in a very low state of savage 
life. Even in the very proudest time of Roman rule, there 
were many districts in our island where there must have 
been a very small supply of metals, and where, at intervals, 
they could not be procured at all, and then the people of such 
districts must have been obliged to have recourse to the more 
easily obtained material, stone. Moreover, there can be 
no doubt that during the Roman period metals cannot have 
been cheap, and were not to be thrown away, and people of 
the less civilised districts, who lived upon the produce of the 
chase, would make use of stone for the heads of arrows 
which were shot from bows, or of heavier weapons which 
were thrown by the hands or by slings, and which very 
probably they might not recover. This practice would of 
course prevail still more in districts which themselves pro- 
duced no metal at all. These facts are remarkably illustrated 
in regard to the county in which we are now assembled. 
In the maritime district of eastern Yorkshire, in the centre 
of which the town of Bridlington stands, which evidently 
was in Roman times an isolated and uncultivated region, 
which produced no metals, and the inhabitants of which 
appear to have lived by hunting and fishing, and where we 
find but few traces of Roman settlements, flint implements, 
