must exist in
great abundance, so that the needs of a rich and varied culture may be
met.

The Divine Author of nature has stored away just such a metal, and in
such exhaustless quantities that it forms an ingredient in nearly all
soils, and flows away in the waters of many springs and rivers. It
exists in abundance in nearly every country of the globe, in some
forming veritable mountain masses. We refer to iron, the king of metals;
and when man had learned to reduce it from its ores he had taken the
first step in a new direction, the end whereof is yet far distant.

We have in the preceding chapter presented some reasons why copper would
be known before iron. In the first place, how were men to learn there
was such a thing as iron? Supposing its ores did occur in abundance,
there was nothing to attract attention to them. They were not of great
heft, like tin ore or of striking color, like the ores of copper. In the
hills, and under the foot of man, nature indeed had imprisoned a genius;
but there was no outward sign by which man was to divine his presence.
Copper, as we have seen, occurs frequently in a native form that is
ready for use, without reducing from its ores. Native iron, on the
contrary, is almost the rarest of substances, though it is reported
as occurring in one or two localities on the earth.<1> Almost the only
examples of native iron has been obtained from meteorites. Strange as it
may seem, these wanderers in space, which occasionally flame athwart
the sky, consist largely of pure iron; at least this is true of such
specimens as have from time to time been found on the earth's surface.
This supply is of course extremely limited, yet some Siberian tribes are
said to make knives from iron obtained in this manner.<2> Moreover the
evidence of language, as used by the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, would
imply the meteoric origin of the first known form of the metal.<3> But
though such accidental finds might prove the existence of another metal,
they would furnish no hint how to extract it from its ores, or indeed,
that it existed in the form of ores.

The prolonged schooling in metallurgy, which men received during the
Bronze Age, could not fail to give them many hints, and doubtless
accidental discoveries of metallic substances were made. We can conceive
how, by accident or design, iron ore, treated in a similar manner
to copper and tin ore, would leave behind a mass of spongy iron. The
difficulty would