The absence of iron and the abundance of bronze in the relics of a prehistoric people is a piece of evidence to be accepted with caution, because the great defect of iron, its proneness to rust, would often lead to its complete disappearance, or conversion into an unrecognizable mass, even though tools of bronze originally laid down beside it might remain but little corroded.
Ores of Iron.-Even though the earth seems to be a huge iron meteor with but a thin covering of rocks, the exasperating proneness of iron to oxidize explains readily why this metal is only rarely found native, except in the form of meteorites.
Yet even in this, his most characteristic talent, his proneness to exaggeration, the attraction which coarse and repulsive images have for his mind, and the tendency to sacrifice general effect to minuteness of detail not infrequently mar his best effects.
The general decline in the quality of these bodies, and especially their proneness to pass ill-considered or pernicious bills at the instance of private promotors, has led to the restriction in recent years of their powers by the insertion in the state constitutions of many provisions forbidding the enactment of certain classes of measures, and regulating the procedure to be adopted in the passing, either of statutes generally or of particular kinds of statutes.
Of these, the most prominent are - the proneness to suppose in nature greater order and regularity than there actually is; the tendency to support a preconceived opinion by affirmative instances, neglecting all negative or opposed cases; and the tendency to generalize from few observations, or to give reality to mere abstractions, figments of the mind.
