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. [Illustration: 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.