We often found ourselves speculating about
the age, and the ages of man. The age of man was said to be seventy, and
might be divided thus:
At ten a child, at twenty wild,
At thirty strong, if ever!
At forty wise, at fifty rich,
At sixty good, or never!
There were some curious Celtic lines which described the age of animals
compared with that of man:
Thrice the age of a dog is that of a horse;
Thrice the age of a horse is that of a man;
Thrice the age of a man is that of a deer;
Thrice the age of a deer is that of an eagle.
The ages of man were divided into three by Lucretius as:
(1) "The Stone Age," when celts or implements of stone were employed.
(2) "The Bronze Age," when implements were made of copper and brass.
(3) "The Iron Age," when implements were made of iron, as in the present
day.
This being the order of antiquity and materials employed in making the
implements, it was therefore safe to conclude that the mining of tin
must have dated back as far as the Bronze Age, for there could have been
no bronze made without tin, since bronze is produced by the mixing of
copper and tin.
Appliances for crushing and smelting the ore were already in existence
in very early times, as well as blowing-houses and moulds in which to
run the molten metal.
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