G. GENERAL NATURAL HISTORY AND ZOOLOGY. 223 



the Ice period ; but Professor Fraas maintains that it also ex- 

 tends into the end of the Tertiary period, which may involve 

 the assumption that man occupied the cave at the time when 

 Central Europe had not received its present configuration. 

 However this may be, we have here a primitive race, living 

 exclusively by the chase, without a single tame animal, not 

 even a dog. Subsequently the race vanished from Middle 

 Europe, probably retreating, with the reindeer, to the arctic 

 regions, while their giant contemporaries, the mammoth and 

 rhinoceros, ceased to exist. V C, 1871, 665. 



NEW LACUSTRINE VILLAGES ON LAKE BIENNE. 



Nature records an interesting archaeological discovery 

 which has recently been made on the shores of the Lake of 

 Bienne, in Switzerland. The Swiss government has been for 

 a long time endeavoring to drain a considerable tract of land 

 between the two lakes of Mo rat and Bienne, but, in order to 

 do this effectually, it has been found necessary to lower the 

 level of the latter by cutting a canal from it to the Lake of 

 Neufchatel. At the beginning of the present year the sluices 

 were opened, and the waters of the Lake of Bienne allowed 

 to flow into that of Neufchatel. Up to the present time the 

 level of the Bieler See has fallen upward of three feet, and 

 this fall has brought to light a number of stakes driven firm- 

 ly into the bed of the lake. This fact becoming known, a 

 number of Swiss archaeologists visited the spot, and it was 

 decided to remove the soil round these stakes to see whether 

 any remains of a lacustrine village, which they suspected had 

 been raised upon them, could be traced. At a distance of 

 between five and six feet from the present bed of the lake 

 the workmen came upon a large number of objects of differ- 

 ent kinds, which have been collected, and are at present un- 

 der the custody of Dr. Gross, of Locrass. Among them are 

 pieces of cord made from hemp, vases, stags' horns, stone 

 hatchets, and utensils used apparently for cooking. The most 

 precious specimen is, however, a hatchet made of nephrite. 

 This hatchet is sixteen centimeters long by seven broad, and 

 is by far the largest yet discovered in any part of Switzer- 

 land, no other collection having any measuring more than 

 eight centimeters in length. A quantity of the bones found 

 at the same time have been sent to Dr. Uhlmann, of Munch- 



