making scabbards or sword-handles. Shortly after the commencement of
the iron age, the lake-habitations were abandoned, the only
settlement of this later epoch yet discovered being that at Tene, on
Lake Neufchatel: and it is a remarkable circumstance, showing the
great antiquity of the lake-dwellings, that they are not mentioned by
any of the Roman historians.

That iron should have been one of the last of the metals to come into
general use, is partly accounted for by the circumstance that iron,
though one of the most generally diffused of minerals, never presents
itself in a natural state, except in meteorites; and that to
recognise its ores, and then to separate the metal from its matrix,
demands the exercise of no small amount of observation and invention.
Persons unacquainted with minerals would be unable to discover the
slightest affinity between the rough ironstone as brought up from the
mine, and the iron or steel of commerce. To unpractised eyes they
would seem to possess no properties in common, and it is only after
subjecting the stone to severe processes of manufacture that usable
metal can be obtained from it. The effectual reduction of the ore
requires an intense heat, maintained by artificial methods, such as
furnaces and blowing apparatus.*
[footnote...
It may be mentioned in passing, that while Zinc is fusible at
3 degrees of Wedgwood's pyrometer, Silver at 22 degrees, Copper at
27 degrees, and Gold at 32 degrees, Cast Iron is only fusible at
130 degrees. Tin (one of the constituents of the ancient bronze) and
Lead are fusible at much lower degrees than zinc.
...]
But it is principally in combination with other elements that iron is
so valuable when compared with other metals. Thus, when combined with