182 LAKE-DWELLINGS MENTIONED BY HERODOTUS. 



have lived in a mariner very similar to that of the Paeonians, 

 as described by Herodotus.* 



"Their dwellings," he says, "are contrived after this manner: 

 planks fitted on lofty piles are placed in the middle of the 

 lake, with a narrow entrance from the main land by a single 

 bridge. These piles, that support the planks, all the citizens 

 anciently placed there at the public charge ; but afterwards 

 they established a law to the following effect : whenever a 

 man marries, for each wife he sinks three piles, bringing wood 

 from a mountain called Orbelus : but every man has several 

 wives. They live in the following manner : every man has a 

 hut on the planks, in which he dwells, with a trap-door closely 

 fitted in the planks, and leading down to the lake. They tie 

 the young children with a cord round the foot, fearing lest 

 they should fall into the lake beneath. To their horses and 

 beasts of burden they give fish for fodder ; of which there is 

 such an abundance, that when a man has opened his trap- 

 door, he lets down an empty basket by a cord into the lake, 

 and, after waiting a short time, draws it up full of fish." 



At the Newcastle meeting of the British Association in 

 1863, Lord Lovaine described a Lake-dwelling observed by 

 him in the South of Scotland ; and in the " Natural History 

 Review," for July, 1863, I had already mentioned one in the 

 North, which, however, had not at that time been thoroughly 

 examined. Sir Charles Bunbury has recorded (Quarterly 

 Journal of the Geological Society, vol. xii. 1856) some similar 

 remains found near Thetford, which have been described at 

 greater length by Mr. Alfred Newton, in an interesting paper 

 " On the Zoology of Ancient Europe/' In his fifth memoir on 

 the Pfahlbauten,-f Dr. Keller has described a Lake-dwelling 

 at Peschiera, on the L. di Garda; and we are indebted to 



* Terpsichore, v. 14. 



t Mittheilungen der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zurich, 1863. 



