hammer, a lady's earrings
and a tubular bridge.

The variety of purposes to which iron is thus capable of being applied,
renders it of more use to mankind than all the other metals combined.
Unlike iron, gold is found pure, and in an almost workable state; and
at an early period in history, it seems to have been much more
plentiful than iron or steel. But gold was unsuited for the purposes
of tools, and would serve for neither a saw, a chisel, an axe, nor a
sword; whilst tempered steel could answer all these purposes. Hence we
find the early warlike nations making the backs of their swords of gold
or copper, and economizing their steel to form the cutting edge. This
is illustrated by many ancient Scandinavian weapons in the museum at
Copenhagen, which indicate the greatest parsimony in the use of steel
at a period when both gold and copper appear to have been comparatively
abundant.

The knowledge of smelting and working in iron, like most other arts,
came from the East. Iron was especially valued for purposes of war, of
which indeed it was regarded as the symbol, being called "Mars" by the
Romans.[6] We find frequent mention of it in the Bible. One of the
earliest notices of the metal is in connexion with the conquest of
Judea by the Philistines. To complete the subjection of the
Israelites, their conquerors made captive all the smiths of the land,
and carried them away. The Philistines felt that their hold of the
country was insecure so long as the inhabitants possessed the means of
forging weapons. Hence "there was no smith found throughout all the
land of Israel; for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them
swords or spears. But the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to
sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his
mattock." [7]

At a later period, when Jerusalem was taken by the Babylonians, one of
their first acts was to carry the smiths and other craftsmen captives
to Babylon.[8] Deprived of their armourers, the Jews were rendered
comparatively powerless.

It was the knowledge of the art of iron-forging which laid the
foundation of the once great empire of the Turks. Gibbon relates that
these people were originally the despised slaves of the powerful Khan
of the Geougen. They occupied certain districts of the mountain-ridge
in the centre of Asia, called Imaus, Caf, and Altai, which yielded iron
in large quantities. This metal the Turks were employed by the Kh