As it has already been intimated, our older metal curios come to us from the Bronze Age. In the relics of that period, in which the British Museum is so rich, we are able to mark the great difference that must have existed between the people who lived the "simple life" in the Stone Age, and those who understood how to make and how to use implements of bronze. Metal must have revolutionized the habits of the people, fostered development, and marked progress as the Age advanced; for with metal appliances there were greater possibilities, and from the fact that while some used bronze others were content with flint, it would appear that then, perhaps, more than at any other time, the more advanced were sharply separated from those who, possessing lesser intelligence and possibly fewer opportunities, stayed behind.
The Dawn of Progress.
The more advanced Britons and the men of the later Bronze Age in other countries improved the patterns of their tools, the basis of which was found in flint implements, which in the later Neolithic period had become more varied. Even then they had hammer, saw, chisel, borer, spear or javelin, and arrow-point. They had also a variety of knives; some of curious sickle-like forms. There are weapons of war and weapons of defence, and some obviously used for the more peaceful arts and domestic purposes. As the collector secures specimens of the rarer types of bronze and metal objects coming to us from those far-off days, we read the story of the evolution of the race, and can picture in our minds the onward march.
FIG. 5 (1).—BRONZE CALDRON; AND FIG. 6 (2).—URN OF THE LATER BRONZE AGE.
(In the British Museum.)
The Romans did not find the ancient Britons quite savages, and we sigh with regret when we think of the numberless relics of priceless value—of bronze and of even more precious metals—which existed then, but which have perished long ago. The melting-pot has been a terribly fierce enemy to the collector of copper and brass, and it is really wonderful how many rare objects of the Bronze Age remain—prehistoric only in that we have no authentic records of the happenings of that period. We have, however, abundant evidence of the importance of that Age in the bronzes preserved to us for so long by Mother Earth, and now carefully tended by museum curators and private collectors. Among the fine examples we possess in our national collections are the ornamental bucklers of which some have been found in Wales and other places. That represented in Fig. 2 (1) came from the Thames Valley, and Fig. 3 (2) from the peat bogs near Aberystwyth; both may be seen in the British Museum.
Some exceptional hoards have been found in Ireland, notably the bronzes which were discovered in 1825 in a part of Whigsborough, called Derreens, in King's Co. It is surmised that although the land is now boggy the soil was at one time under cultivation, and from indications it would appear as if the bronzefounder had worked on the spot. In Fig. 4 several representative implements found in that hoard are pictured; their descriptions are as follows: Fig. 4 (1 and 3), palstaves; (5, 6, and 7), daggers; (2) a pear-shaped bell; (4 and 8) curved trumpets, all specimens of the latter part of the Bronze Age or of the beginning of the Iron Age. Many fine bronze vessels, chiefly without feet, have been found in Ireland. The two examples shown in Figs. 5 and 6 represent the way in which they were made, especially Fig. 5 (1), in which the riveting of the plates will be observed. Fig. 6 (2) has been designated an urn. Both of these late bronzes are in the British Museum, along with other Irish finds. In the same collection there is a trumpet of horn with rings or bands of studs, the mouthpiece being at the side. It is a curious relic of an Irish musician, found some years ago at Drimoleague, Co. Cork.