bronze. No line of demarcation thus trenchant can be drawn; and no proofs of absolute succession thus conclusive can be discovered. Upon the whole, however, there was a time when the early Britons were in the position of the South Sea Islanders when first discovered, i.e., ignorant of the use of metals. As long as the arts of metallurgy are unknown, the notice of the physical conditions of the country is confined to its Flora, its Fauna, and its stone quarries. What was there to cultivate? What was there to hunt or to domesticate? What was there to build with? Now, however, the questions change. What were the mineral resources of the soil? It is not necessary[30] to enlarge on these. The use of coal as a fuel is wholly recent. On the other hand, certain varieties of it were used as ornaments—the cannel coal, and the bituminous shale of Dorsetshire (Kimmeridge clay). So was jet.

The metal first worked was gold; and its use dates as far back as the Stone period; indeed it may belong to the very earliest age of our island; since the localities where it has been found in Great Britain are by no means few; and in early times each was richer than at present. In England, from Alston Moor; in Scotland, from the head-waters of the Clyde; and in Ireland, from the Avonmore, gold for the adornment of even the hunters of the bone spear-head, and the woodsmen of the stone-hatchet might have been procured; and the simple art of working it, although it may possibly have been Gallic in origin, may quite as easily have been native. The chief gold ornaments, torcs, armillæ, and fibulæ have been found in association with bronze articles, but not exclusively.

With those archæologists and ethnologists who believe that the introduction of bronze implements coincided with the advent of a new variety of mankind, the question whether the art of alloying and casting metals was of native or foreign origin, is a verbal one; since it was native or foreign just as we define the term—native to the[31] stock which introduced it on the British soil, foreign to the soil itself. But as soon as we demur to the notion that the earliest Britons were a separate and peculiar stock, and commit ourselves to the belief that they were simply Kelts in a ruder condition, the problem presents itself in a different and more important form. Was the art of making an alloy of tin and copper self-evolved, or was it an art which foreign commerce introduced? Was the art of casting such alloys British? It is well to keep the two questions separate. The preliminary facts in respect to the history of the bronze metallurgy are as follows:—

1. The peculiar geographical distribution of tin, which of all the metals of any wide practical utility is found in the fewest localities, those localities being far apart, e.g., Britain and Malacca—

2. The wide extent of country over which bronze implements are found. Except in Norway and Sweden, where the use of iron seems to have immediately followed that of stone and bone, they have been found all over Europe—

3. The narrow limits to the proportions of alloy—nine-tenths copper, and one-tenth tin—there or thereabouts—in the majority of cases.

4. The considerable amount of uniformity in the shape of even those implements wherein a considerable variety of form is admissible. Thus the bronze sword—a point hereafter to be noticed—is[32] almost always long, leaf-shaped, pointed, and without a handle.

The last three of these facts suggest the notion that bronze metallurgy originated with a single population; the first, that that population was British. Yet neither of these inferences is unimpeachable.

The notion that the bronze implements themselves were made in any single country, and thence diffused elsewhere, has but few upholders; since, in most of the countries where they have been found, the moulds for making them have been found also. Hence the doctrine that the raw material—the mixed metal only—was brought from some single source is the more important one. Yet chemical investigations have modified even this.[2] The proportions in question are the best, and they are easily discovered to be so. Seven parts copper to one of tin has been shewn by experiment to be too brittle, and fifteen parts copper to one of tin too soft, for use. Within these proportions the chief analyses of the ancient bronze implements range. The exact proportion of ten copper to one of tin, Mr. Wilson has shewn to be an overstatement. All then that we are warranted to infer is, that Britain was the chief source of the tin.

[33]

This is a great fact in the annals of our early commerce, but not necessarily of much importance in the natural history of our inventions; since it by no means follows that because Cornwall supplied tin to such adventurous merchants as sought to buy it, it therefore discovered the art of working it.

The chief reason for believing that the art of working in any metal except gold was as foreign to Britain as the alphabet was to Greece, rests on a negative fact, of which too little notice has been taken. Copper is a metal of which England produces plenty. It is a metal, too, which is the easiest worked of all, except gold and lead. It is the metal which savage nations, such as some of the American Indians, work when they work no other; and, lastly, it is a metal of which, in its unalloyed state, no relics have been found in England. Stone and bone first; then bronze or copper and tin combined; but no copper alone. I cannot get over this hiatus—cannot imagine a metallurgic industry beginning with the use of alloys. Such a phenomenon is a plant without the seed; and, as such, indicates transplantation rather than growth.

This view assists us in our chronology. If the art of working in bronze be a native and independent development, its antiquity may be of any amount—going back to 3000 B.C. as easily as to[34] 2000 B.C., and to 2000 B.C. as easily as to 1000 B.C. It may be of any age whatever, provided only that it be later than the Stone period. But if it be an exotic art, it must be subsequent to the rise of the Phœnician commerce. Such I believe to have been the case. That the Britons were apt learners, and that they soon made the art their own, is likely. The existence of bronze and stone moulds for adzes and celts proves this.

The effects of the introduction of metal implements would be two-fold. It would act on the social state of the occupants of the British Isles, and act on the physical condition of the soil. The opportunities of getting stones and bones for the purposes of warfare, would be pretty equally distributed over the islands, so that the means of attack and defence would be pretty equal throughout; but the use of bronze would give a vast preponderance of power to certain districts, Cornwall, Wales, and the copper countries. The vast forests, too, upon which stone hatchets would have but little effect, would be more easily cleared, and their denizens would be more successfully hunted.

Amber ornaments are found along with the implements of bronze. Do these imply foreign commerce—commerce with the tribes of Courland and Prussia—the pre-eminent amber localities? Not necessarily. Amber, in smaller quantities, is found in Britain.[35]

Glass beads, too, are found. This, I think, does imply commerce. At any rate, I am slow to believe that the art of fusing glass was of indigenous growth. The use of it was, most