Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/40

22 not so much decayed as are those of the stone period; the latter having wasted down quite to the level of the mud, whereas the piles of the bronze age (as in the Lake of Bienne, for example) still project above it.

Professor Rütimeyer of Basle, well known to paleontologists as the author of several important memoirs on fossil vertebrata, has recently published a scientific description of great interest of the animal remains dredged up at various stations where they had been embedded for ages in the mud into which the piles were driven. These bones bear the same relation to the primitive inhabitants of Switzerland and some of their immediate successors as do the contents of the Danish 'refuse-heaps' to the ancient fishing and hunting tribes who lived on the shores of the Baltic.

The list of wild mammalia enumerated in this excellent treatise contains no less than twenty-four species, exclusive of several domesticated ones: besides which there are eighteen species of birds, the wild swan, goose, and two species of ducks being among them; also three reptiles, including the eatable frog and fresh-water tortoise; and lastly, nine species of fresh water fish. All these (amounting to fifty-four species) are with one exception still living in Europe. The exception is the wild bull (Bos primigenius), which, as before stated, survived in historical times. The following are the mammalia alluded to: The bear (Ursus Arctos), the badger, the common marten, the polecat, the ermine, the weasel, the otter, wolf, fox, wild cat, hedgehog, squirrel, field-mouse (Mus sylvaticus), hare, beaver, hog (comprising two races, namely, the wild boar and swamp-hog), the stag (Cervus Elephas), the roe-deer, the fallow-deer, the elk, the steinbock (Capra Ibex), the chamois, the Lithuanian bison, and the wild bull. The