"It is, without doubt, to this votive idea that we must attribute the fact that so many beautiful objects which ornament our museums have been found deposited in these sepulchres; but we must remark that the large and roughly-hewn hatchets, and also the knives of the second epoch, are replaced, in the third epoch, by polished hatchets often even fitted with handles, and also by knives of much larger size and finer workmanship. "As an additional corroboration of my ideas, I will mention a curious fact which I ascertained to exist in two sepulchres of this kind which I searched; the significance of this fact can only be explained by a hypothesis which any one may readily develop. "Each of them contained one long polished hatchet, broken in two in the middle; the other portion of which was not found in the sepulchre. "One is now in the Museum at Cluny, where I deposited it; the other is still in my own possession. It is beyond all dispute that they were thus broken at the time of the interment. "Numerous hatchets broken in a similar way have been found by M. A. Forgeais in the bed of the Seine at Paris, and also in various other spots; all of them were broken in the middle, and I have always been of opinion that they proceeded from sepulchres of a like kind, which, having been placed on the edge of the river, had been washed away by the flow of water which during long ages had eaten away the banks." At a subsequent period, that is, during the bronze epoch, dead bodies were often, as we shall see, reduced to ashes either wholly or in part, and the ashes were enclosed in urns. FOOTNOTES: [26] Alexandre Bertrand's 'Les Monuments Primitifs de la Gaule.' [27] 'Des Sépultures à l'Age de la Pierre,' pp. 15, 16. 1865. [28] 'Le Danemark à l'Exposition Universelle de 1867.' Paris. 1868. THE AGE OF METALS. I. THE BRONZE EPOCH. CHAPTER I. The Discovery of Metals--Various Reasons suggested for explaining the Origin of Bronze in the West--The Invention of Bronze--A Foundry during the Bronze Epoch--Permanent and Itinerant Foundries existing during the Bronze Epoch--Did the knowledge of Metals take its rise in Europe owing to the Progress of Civilisation, or was it a Foreign Importation? The acquisition and employment of metals is one of the greatest facts in our social history. Thenard, the chemist, has asserted that we may judge of the state of civilisation of any nation by the degree of perfection at which it has arrived in the workmanship of iron. Looking at the matter in a more general point of view, we may safely say that if man had never become acquainted with metals he would have remained for ever in his originally savage state.