Page:Excavations at the Kesslerloch.djvu/71

Rh Kesslerloch, but had come into their possession by excliange with some of the neighbouring races. But if we examine the drawings of all the other cave-dwellers, we shall find that they are by no means so well executed as those from the Kesslerloch. Whence could they have got drawings, which up to the present day have never been found so perfect as these? I have not, however, the slightest doubt that our cave-dwellers made exchanges with other cave-dwellers, as this may be proved by the shells found in the cave, some from the Mediterranean Sea, and others from the Vienna Basin.

I will take this opportunity of expressing an idea which may be worth more mature consideration. It seems to me, in fact, that it would further the objects of the Swiss Natural History Society, if, as has been done for geology, it were to grant a sum of money for the exploration of the Swiss caves. If this were done, we should soon arrive at new discoveries. We have decided proofs that our Troglodytes did not always remain at the same grade of civilisation during their residence in the Kesslerloch; for if we investigate the position where the different implements were found, it is very striking that the ornaments, needles, drawings, and sculptures occurred only in the uppermost parts of the relic-bed. Thus, for instance, the objects drawn, Plate XII. fig. 70, and Plate X. fig. 66, were found in the immediate neighbourhood of the pillar before mentioned, and hardly two inches and a half under the surface of the black relic-bed. If we had rigidly sorted all the specimens when found according to the beds in which they occurred, this result would have been shown in a more striking manner.

Probably no one doubts that the grade of civilisation of our cave-dwellers is to be placed in far distant times. Though this is not the place for a regular dissertation on these remote periods, yet it may not be out of place to bring forward some conjectures as to the age of this settlement. The first notice in history as to the inhabitants of Helvetia is found in Cæsar; but in his reports about Switzerland he does not say a word about the lake-dwellings, though the remains of two hundred or thereabouts of these settlements are known at the present day. It is hardly to be supposed that this man, of such a powerful and versatile genius, would not have known of these peculiar villages, built in the water, if they had existed in his time; and we may therefore with great probability assume that at that period, or about 60, the lake-dwellings had disappeared; for Cæsar says in his report that the Helvetians had settled in