When, however, in various countries we find interments and even cemeteries in which bronze and iron weapons and instruments are intermingled, and the forms of those in bronze are what we have learnt from other sources to regard as the latest, while the forms in iron are not those for which that metal is best adapted, but are almost servile copies of the bronze instruments found with them, the proof of the one having succeeded the other is almost absolutely conclusive. The lessons taught by such cemeteries as that at Hallstatt, in Austria, and by our own Late Celtic interments, such as those at Arras, in Yorkshire, are of the highest importance in this question. It is not, however, to be supposed that even in countries by no means geographically remote from each other the introduction either of iron or bronze must of necessity have taken place at one and the same chronological period. Near the shores of the Mediterranean the use of each metal no doubt prevailed far earlier than in any of the northern countries of Europe; and though the knowledge of metals probably spread from certain centres, its progress can have been but slow, for in each part of Europe there appears to have been some special development, particularly in the forms of bronze instruments, and there is no absolute uniformity in their types extending over any large area. In each country the process of manufacture was carried on, and though some commerce in tools and arms of bronze no doubt took place between neighbouring tribes, yet as a rule there are local peculiarities characteristic of special districts. So marked are these that a practised archæologist can in almost all cases, on inspection of a group of bronze antiquities, fix with some degree of confidence the country in which they were found. To this rule Britain offers no exception, and though some forms of instruments were no doubt imported, yet, as will subsequently be seen, our types are for the most part indigenous. As to the ornamentation of bronze by bronze tools, I have seen none in this country on objects which I should refer to the Bronze Age but what could have been effected by means of bronze punches, of which indeed examples have been discovered in bronze-founders’ hoards in France,[103] and what are probably such also in Britain. Such ornamentation is, however, simple compared with that on many of the Danish forms, and yet I have seen the complicated Scandinavian ornaments accurately and sharply reproduced by Dr. Otto Tischler, by means of bronze tools only, on bronze of the ordinary ancient alloy.