the lake for the purpose of getting rid of them. Such precious articles were probably handed down with great care from generation to generation, and possibly in later days gold that once graced the neck or arms of prehistoric men and women has reappeared time after time in the form of coins, first the rude imitations of the staters of Philip of Macedon, again under the form of Roman aurei, and perhaps even bore the impress of some mediaeval monarch at a later time. There have been issues of coins both in ancient and modern times of which not a single specimen is at present known; yet if any one were to argue from this against the truth of the documentary evidence, the spade of a peasant by turning up a single coin might on the moment wreck all his logic. The sum of positive knowledge which we obtain from this discussion is therefore that some people who inhabited Switzerland in what is called the neolithic age (a vague and often misleading phrase) were acquainted with the use of gold ornaments. Could we but fix the inferior limits of this neolithic age, we should at least obtain an approximate date before which gold was already known. But it is most probable that stone, bronze and even iron long continued to be used side by side in the same areas. The man who had no articles to barter for bronze continued to use stone implements of his own manufacture, whilst his more fortunate coeval used weapons made of the superior but more costly material.
Granting now that bronze implements made their way from the Mediterranean into the middle and north of Europe, brought most likely by traders from the more civilized shores of the Aegean, let us ask ourselves how did the men of the neolithic stage obtain them. Did the kindly Phoenician trader generously bestow as free gifts these articles on the barbarians of the West? Does the trader of today among the isles of Melanesia lavish for mere thanks his wares upon the natives who gather round him on the beach? In Homer those Phoenician shipmen are described by an epithet, which by the mildest interpretation means knaves. The men who brought bronze got some valuable objects in exchange