Colonel A. Lane-Fox has summarised the four principal theories[1017] concerning the source of bronze in Great Britain. Dr. Evans[1018] prudently finds ‘a certain amount of truth embodied in each of those opinions’; but he also concludes that No. 4 must commend itself to all archæologists. I quite agree with this view, provided that the common centre be Egypt, and that Western Asia be held only a line of transit. We have full proof of the immense antiquity of bronze in the Nile region, whence the art would radiate through the world. But the almost identical proportions of the alloy (nine copper to one tin) and the persistent forms suggest that a wandering race of metal-workers, somewhat like the Gypsies of a later age, are the originators of the _Stations_, the _Fonderies_, and the _Trésors_. The first step from Egypt would be to Khita-land and Phœnicia; and these ‘Englishmen of Antiquity’ would carry the art far and wide. Sir J. Lubbock opines that the Phœnicians were acquainted with the mineral fields of Cornwall between B.C. 1500–1200; somewhat niggard measure, for the Bronze Age in Switzerland is dated from B.C. 3000. On the other hand, Professor Rhys absolutely denies that there are any traces of Phœnician art in England. Dr. Evans[1019] assumes the total duration of the Bronze Period in Britain at between eight and ten centuries. He would divide this sum into three several stages,[1020] and to the last, which produced the bronze Sword, he assigns a minimum duration of four hundred to five hundred years. This was followed by the Early Iron Age, or later Keltic Period. The metal may have been used in southern Britain, peopled long before Cæsar’s time by immigrant Belgii, not later than the fourth or fifth century B.C., the approximate date of the earliest iron Swords in Gaul.[1021] Lastly, by the second or third century B.C. the exclusive use of bronze for cutting implements had practically ceased in Belgic Britain; the Roman historians do not lead us to suppose that the weapons, even of the northern Britons, were anything but iron.