The inquiry into the origin of the use of iron is a purely aca-
demic one. Iron rusts so rapidly that the delicate gold enrich-
ments of a sword or cap may be exhumed in perfect preservation,
whilst the blade or helm' is only traceable in a trail of rust. But
though the great bulk of the objects in iron belonging to remote
antiquity have totally disappeared ; yet in no instance are we
justified in assuming that iron implements have been in use where
no traces of such exist. The evidence of the objects themselves,
as well as of tradition, leaves no doubt whatever that the know-
ledge of gold and of copper preceded, in a general way, that of
iron ; and we find that any extensive use of the latter implied, as
a rule, a high degree of civilisation. The fact that the use of
iron is nearly always found to be coeval with the most ancient
written history has been advanced as proof of the contrary, but
it can prove nothing more than that the art of working iron and
the art of writing language are two stages in the progress of civili-
sation which have often been reached concurrently. The use of
iron is indeed seldom found to antedate history or human tradi-
tion ; and we can nowhere regard iron weapons or tools, as we
can bronze or stone, as prehistoric, except in a restricted and
local sense. Whenever the superficial deposits of countries in
which the works of man are preserved have been scientifically
and at all exhaustively explored, we are at once aware of long
periods, about which history is wholly silent, in which the use of



THE EARLY HISTORY OF IRONWORK. 21

iron was utterly unknown ; and even in the traditions of the great
civilisations of antiquity, we get unmistakable hints that the age
of bronze was too recent to have been wholly forgotten. The
first impulse of man would be to arm himself and make use of
implements and weapons of stone, wood, and bone ; and the Stone
Ages, when the use of metal was practically unknown, are shown
by the most unequivocal evidence to have been of enormous
duration. 