Now, in a certain modified sense, I should be quite prepared to admit a stone age. Nothing more probable than that in the dispersion certain families would have taken only what came readiest to hand. Those who made long marches, and came to countries where minerals were scarce, would have been in the way of losing the knowledge of metals altogether, except in so far as they preserved the tradition of them; and this would much depend upon how far they preserved other traditions.[243] Some instance should be given us--and as there are savages who are still using nothing but flint, there is still the chance--of some set of savages who have spontaneously hit upon the plan of fusing different metals, or even of smelting metals which were under their eye? Certainly not our supposed flint ancestors, who, as Professor Nillson and Sir J. Lubbock agree, must have got their knowledge of bronze from Asia: Sir J. Lubbock inclining to an Indo-European, Professor Nillson to a Phoenician "origin of the bronze age civilisation." ("Pre-historic Times," p. 49.) All this perfectly coincides with the view I have indicated, that the contrast arose through the divergence of the lines of the dispersion, leading the tribes to varied fortunes, some losing and others retaining the tradition; and those who retained it eventually communicating it to those who had lapsed. But then there are those unfortunate Bashkirs, who, Professor Nillson tells us, are still in their stone age, and who have remained Bashkirs since Herodotus described them as such 2300 years ago. As they have resisted the contact of civilisation so long, one can only watch with careful curiosity the transitionary process by which they will pass by internal development from their stone to their bronze age.[244] [243] "Mr Vaux of the British Museum has added the following interesting note on the metallurgy of the ancients. 1st, The earliest form of metal work appears to have been employed in the ornamentation of sacred vessels for temples, &c.... Occasionally the floor or foundation of some temples was of brass: thus [Greek: chalkeos oudos] (Soph. OEd. Col.), perhaps like the room at Delphi called [Greek: laïnos oudos], itself also a treasury."--Layard, "Nineveh and Babylon," p. 673. Boulanger, "L'antiquité dévoilée par ses usage," (iii. 359), says, "Ce sont les mystères qui out tiré les hommes de la vie sauvage pour les ramener à la vie sociale et policée. Ces mystères étoient un composé de cérémonies religieuses ... _leur origine remonte_ au temps des héros et des demi-dieux." [244] "Of all the different phases of civilisation, those which a nation _must pass_ before it attains the highest grade of development, the first rude state is the most enduring and the most difficult to get over."--Professor Nillson's "Stone Age," 191.