It may by some be thought that a vast amount of useless trouble has been bestowed in figuring and describing so many varieties of what were after all in most cases the ordinary tools of the artificer, or the common arms of the warrior or huntsman, which differed from each other only in apparently unimportant particulars. But as in biological studies minute anatomy often affords the most trustworthy evidence as to the descent of any given organism from some earlier form of life, so these minor details in the form and character of ordinary implements, which to the cursory observer appear devoid of meaning, may, to a skilful archæologist, afford valuable clues by which the march of the bronze civilisation over Europe may be traced to its original starting-place. I am far from saying that this has as yet been satisfactorily accomplished, and to my mind it will only be by accumulating a far larger mass of facts than we at present possess that comparative archæology will be able to triumph over the difficulties with which its path is still beset. Much is, however, being done, and I trust that so far as the British Isles are concerned, the facts which I have here collected and the figures which I have caused to be engraved will at all events form a solid foundation on which others may be able to build. So long ago as 1876 I was able to present to the foreign archæologists assembled at Buda-Pest for the International Congress of Prehistoric Archæology and Anthropology, a short abstract of this work in the shape of my _Petit Album de l’âge du Bronze de la Grande Bretagne_, which I have reason to believe has been found of some service. At that time my friend the late Sir William Wilde was still alive, and as the bronze antiquities of Ireland appeared to be especially under his charge, I had not regarded them as falling within the scope of my book. After his lamented death there was, however, no possibility of interfering with his labours, by my including the bronze antiquities of the sister country with those of England, Wales, and Scotland in the present work, and I accordingly enlarged my original plan.