Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/387

] of flint by Pyrodes, the son of Cilix, is a myth which points to the use of silex and pyrites rather than of steel.

The important position of the axe in the Bronze civilisation is proved by its numbers; and the introduction of edged tools of metal must have caused a great improvement in the carpentery. Chisels, gouges, and adzes, and little bronze saws, from three to five inches long, apparently, from their small size, imitated from the serrated flint flakes of the Neolithic age, were their most usual tools for cutting wood.

Spinning and weaving were carried to a higher pitch of perfection in the Bronze age than before. In the Neolithic age the material employed for fabrics was composed of linen; in that of Bronze the art of spinning wool into thread, and of weaving it into cloth, first makes its appearance. In the Scale-house barrow, Rylstone, to which we have already referred, the body had been covered from head to foot in cloth before being buried in the coffin, composed of a hollow oak trunk. The body had been turned into adipocere. It must be observed that woollen fabrics can be preserved only under very rare circumstances. They are completely destroyed by fire, and they rapidly decay in water; and it is only under those imperfectly known and exceptional conditions in which the body is turned into adipocere, and the bones into phosphate of iron, from the percolation of water charged with salts of iron, that they withstand decay. It does not therefore follow that the