Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/428

400 A second instance of the discovery of old tools in British copper mines is offered by the surface workings at Alderley Edge, near Manchester, from which I obtained in 1874 many stone hammers of the same kind as those mentioned above, along with stone wedges. Similar instruments occur in the copper mines in Spain. In those at Cordova flint implements, and picks made of stags' antler, have been met with, resembling those found in the Neolithic flint mines of Cissbury and Brandon, as well as stone hammers of the kind found in Britain. We may therefore conclude that copper was worked in Spain and Britain, and probably also in many other countries on the Continent, as far back as the Bronze age. When once the art of reducing the ores became known, they would be worked wherever they were discovered. It is interesting to remark that the hammers found in the European mines are of the same form as those used by the Red Indians in working the native copper of Lake Superior.

The tin-stone (oxide of tin) or cassiterite is not conspicuous, like copper, for its brilliancy of colour, being brown, yellowish-green, sometimes opaque and some- times transparent, and it is remarkably limited in its distribution in Europe. It occurs in the granitic and highly altered crystalline rocks, in veins disseminated through the mass; or where the rocks have been worn away by frost, rain, and rivers, it is found in irregular