250 ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 



in the Danisli refuse-heaps, where worked flints are a thonsancl times 

 more plentiful than in the St. Acheul gravel, human bones are of 

 the greatest rarity. In this case, as in the Drift age, mankind 

 lived by hunting and fishing, and could not therefore be very nu- 

 merous. In the era however of the Swiss lake habitations, the case 

 was different. M. Troyon estimates the population of the " Pfahl- 

 bauten" during the Stone age as about 32,000 ; in the Bronze era, 

 42,000. On these calculations, indeed, even their ingenious author 

 would not probably place much reliance : still, the number of the 

 Lake villages already known is very considerable ; in four of the Swiss 

 lakes only, more than 70 have been discovered, and some of them were 

 of great extent : "Wangen, for instance, being, according to M. Lohle, 

 supported on more than 40,000 piles. Yet, if we exclude a few bones of 

 children, only five skeletons have been obtained from all these settle- 

 ments taken together. The number of flint implements obtained 

 hitherto from the drift of the Somme valley, is not estimated at more 

 than 3000 ; the settlement at Concise alone (Lake of Neufchatel) 

 has supplied about 24,000, and yet has not produced a single human 

 skeleton. (Rapport a la Commission des Musees, October 1861, p. 16). 

 Probably this absence of bones is almost entu'ely attributable to 

 the habit of burying ; the instinct of man has long been in most 

 cases to bury his dead out of his sight ; still, so far as the drift of 

 St. Acheul is concerned, the difficulty will altogether disappear if we 

 remember that no trace has ever yet been found of any animal as small 

 as a vian. The larger and more solid bones of the elephant and rhi- 

 noceros, the hippopotamus, ox and stag * remain, but every vestige 

 of the smaller bones has perished. Till we find the remains of the 

 dog, boar, roedeer, badger, and other animals which existed during 

 the drift period, we camiot much wonder at the entire absence of 

 human skeletons. 



In all the other places where flint implements have occurred they 

 have been very rare (except perhaps at Hoxne), and though the as- 

 certained mammahan famia is not everywhere quite so restricted as at 

 St. Acheul, still very few small animals have as yet occurred. 



It is useless to speculate as to the use made of these venerable 

 weapons. Almost as well might we ask to what would they not be 

 applied. Infinite as are our instruments, who wovdd attempt even 

 at present to say what was the use of a knife. But the primitive 



* The bones of the stag owe their preservation perhaps to another canse. Prof. 

 Kiitimeyer tells us tliat among the bones from the Pfahlbauten none are in better 

 condition than those of the stag ; this is the consequence, he says, " ihrem dichten 

 Gefiige, ihrer lliirte und Sprodigkeit, so wie der grossen Fettlosigkeit," pecuharities 

 which recommended them so strongly to the men of the stone age, that tliey used 

 them in preference to all others, nay almost exclusively, in the manufacture of those 

 instruments wliich could be made of bone — (Famia der Pfahlbauten, ]). 12). How 

 common the bones of the stag are in quaternaiy strata, geologists know, and wc 

 liave here perhaps an explanation of the fact. The antler of this animal is also pre- 

 ferred at the present day by the Esquimaux in the maiuifiicturc of their stone 

 weapons. (Sir E. Ik'lchcr, 1. c. p. 154.) 



