Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 1.djvu/209

Rh fox, beaver, and birds of various kinds, prove the chase to have been a common pursuit. The dog, then as now, was the companion and guard of man; and the presence of the cat shews the fixed and domestic life of these dwellers on the lakes. Even in the remote period that we designate the age of stone, they seem to have had horses; and the adjacent shores supported their oxen, swine, sheep, and goats. In the later bronze period the numerous remains of oxen found during the researches in the Lake of Bienne prove that these animals were then abundant.

In some places, as at Moosseedorf, the great accumulation of chippings of stone and flint, the polishing tools, &c., prove the rude material to have been brought to the platforms, and fashioned, by a long course of patient industry, into implements of daily requirement. Dr. Uhlmann has collected at this one spot above one thousand examples of such implements of the earliest period. Among them are some rare instances of arrow-heads of rock crystal. Elsewhere the débris of the oven or the kiln tell us of the exercise of the potter's art. In the whorl-stones we have evidence that the women plied the spindle. Whether flax was known to them does not appear; hemp they certainly had, and of course wool. It is a matter, too, of some interest to find in this wild region a more widely extended agriculture than usually supposed. "We are now well assured," says M. Troyon, in a private letter, "of the cultivation even then of wheat and barley, grains of which, carbonised in the conflagrations, have remained in perfect preservation. I have also in my possession nuts, beech mast, the seeds of raspberries; also the remains of a kind of mat made from hemp, the cultivation of which must therefore have been known."

It only remains to allude to the general destruction of these dwellings by fire after so long a duration. Impregnable fortresses they no doubt appeared in times when the art of boat-building in this wild region did not extend further than the tedious process of hollowing out a log of timber. Herodotus has certainly placed on record that the Pæonians of the Prasias Lake preserved their independence on the Persian invasion, and defied the attacks of Xerxes: but their safety may probably be attributed to their peculiar position in the lake—. The short distance of these Swiss villages from the shore, which the depth of the lakes would ordinarily compel, was probably the cause of their destruction. Within easy bow-shot of the shore, they were not out of reach of fiery projectiles, against which thatched roofs and wooden walls would