THE AGE OF BRONZE—AN INTERMEDIATE COPPER AGE—EUROPEAN COPPER IMPLEMENTS—NATIVE SILVER AND COPPER—TIN AND COPPER ORES—THE CASSITERIDES—ANCIENT SOURCES OF TIN—ARTS OF YUCATAN—ALLOYED COPPER AXE-BLADES—BRONZE SILVER-MINING TOOL—PERUVIAN BRONZES— PRIMITIVE MINING TOOLS—NATIVE METALLURGIC PROCESSES—METALLIC TREASURES OF THE INCAS—TRACES OF AN OLDER RACE—PERUVIAN HISTORY—THE TOLTECS AND MEXICANS—ADJUSTMENT OF CALENDAR— BARBARIAN EXCESSES—NATIVE GOLDSMITH’S WORK—PANAMA GOLD RELICS —MEXICAN METALLIC CURRENCY—EXPERIMENTAL PROCESSES—ANCIENT EUROPEAN BRONZES—TESTS OF CIVILISATION—ANCIENT AMERICAN BRONZES—THE NATIVE METALLURGIST. The age of bronze in the archæological history of European civilisation symbolises a transitional stage of very partial development, and imperfect materials and arts, through which the Old World passed in its progress towards the maturity of true historic times; but the Bronze Period of the New World is the highest stage of its self-developed civilisation, prior to the intrusion of European arts. Whether we regard the bronze implements of Britain and the North of Europe as concomitant with the intrusion of new races, or only as proofs of the discovery or introduction of a new art pregnant with many civilising and elevating tendencies, they constitute an important element in primitive ethnology. For a time they necessarily coincide with many monuments and works of art pertaining in character to the stone-period; just as the stone implements and weapons still manufactured by the Indians and Esquimaux are contemporaneous with many products of foreign metallurgy, but nevertheless are the perpetuation of processes developed in a period when metallurgic arts were entirely unknown. The evidence that the British Bronze Period followed a simpler and ruder one of stone is such as scarcely to admit of challenge, independent of the _à priori_ likelihood in favour of this order of succession. The question however suggests itself whether metallurgy did not find its natural beginning there, as elsewhere, in the easy working of the virgin copper, and so intercalate a copper age between Europe’s stone, and its true Bronze Period. On this subject Dr. Latham remarks, in his _Ethnology of the British Islands_, “Copper 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.” It is a mistake, however, to say that no unalloyed British copper relics have been found. No very special attention was directed till recently to the distinction. Nearly all the earlier writers who refer to the metallic weapons and tools of ancient Mexico and Central America, apply the term “copper” to the mixed metal of which these were made; while among European antiquaries the corresponding relics of the