Whencesoever the first knowledge of the metallurgic arts was derived, it introduced into the British Isles the elements of a change scarcely less momentous than those which later ages trace to letters, the magnet, the printing-press, or these latest applications of the metals--the railway and the electric telegraph. The native Briton was no longer confined to his little clearing on the coast, nor compelled with ingenious toil to fashion the shapeless flint and stone into the weapons and implements that supplied his simple wants. The forests rang with the axe and the wedge; the low grounds were gradually cleared of their primeval forests; and the fruits of patient industry were substituted, in part at least, for the spoils of the chase. Still the change was wrought, as might be anticipated, only by very slow degrees. The weapons and implements would in many localities long precede the knowledge of the arts by which they were formed. The old generation would die out, and be buried with the stone war-hatchet and spear, while the younger race were learning to despise such imperfect arms. Necessity also, arising from their costliness and scarcity, would long confine the majority to the primitive and inefficient tools and weapons of their fathers. Even after the flint lance had been entirely superseded by the bronze sword and spear, the missile weapons would still be made of the old material, and the large stone hammer would be retained in use as too bulky an object to be constructed of the more costly metal. It is probable, indeed, that stone implements were never entirely abandoned throughout the whole Bronze Period. No large bronze hammers have ever been found in Britain, while those of stone frequently occur along with metallic remains; and the larger hammers and axes, chiefly of granite, are among the most abundant of Scottish primitive relics. So recently as the month of October 1849, an ancient working of great extent was broken into at the Llandudno Copper Mines, at Ormes Head, in North Wales. In this were found a great number of stone hammers or mauls of various sizes, weighing from two to forty pounds, supposed to have been used in crushing the ore or detaching it from the rock. There also lay beside them a number of bones, and the portion of a bronze tool; affording altogether one of the most interesting discoveries yet made illustrative of the arts of the British Bronze Period.[245] Traces of ancient mining operations have also been found in Scotland. Pennant describes trenches in the Island of Jura by which the veins both of lead and copper have been wrought in very early times, and by instruments unknown to the modern miner.[246]