Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/325

Rh found in the Swiss plain nor in the Jura. It is true that copper minerals exist in some of the valleys of the Alps, but it is very probable that the ancient lake-dwellers received the metal from more distant countries where the mines were more easily worked. With respect to tin, it is at any rate certain that the nearest beds are in Saxony, in Cornwall, and in Spain. It has long been debated whether these metals, tin, copper, and bronze, were brought to Switzerland already worked, or were cast on the spot; whether there was a local, native industry, or the arms, instruments, and ornaments were brought, having been already wrought out in foreign lands. It is now possible to answer the question. Some of the articles were imported already manufactured, for they evidently exhibit types of foreign industry. A superb vase of cast bronze and a fibula from Corcelettes, on the Lake of Neufchâtel, are preserved in the Museum of Lausanne, the form and ornamentation of which are manifestly Scandinavian. Other pieces, more numerous, recall forms of the south of France or of Italy. On the other hand, ingots or pigs of unworked metal are very rare in our finds. There was, however, also a local industry; and the lake-dwellers knew how to cast and hammer bronze in their own villages. We have proof of this in a relatively considerable number of molds deposited in the Swiss museums, among others at Lausanne, at Geneva, and in Dr. Gross's collection. In the plates illustrating the last collection are figured no less than three bronze molds, two of which are double, eight clay valves or fragments of molds, and seventeen molds or fragments in molasse (Fig. 2, No. 7). Sometimes one of the stone molds served for the casting of several objects; and the seventeen molds of Dr. Gross contain the matrices for seventy-two different pieces. Besides these molds, castings of bronze hammers, anvils, shears, and punches, complete the outfit of the founder, and demonstrate that his industry was indeed practiced on the spot. Whether the founder was a native, and established where he worked, or whether, like the tinkers of our own days, he was a foreigner and a wanderer, is a question to which a definite answer can not be returned.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La Nature.



S structures are evolved, so are the functions which structures subserve. And as the functions of the body are evolved, so are those combinations of bodily actions evolved which we include under the general term conduct. 