3 o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cation. That chance it has, as yet, nowhere had. Our colleges, so 

 far as they have admitted scientific students, have allowed them to 

 come in with a very inferior preparation. The French and German, 

 and for that matter the English, too, in most of our colleges, are mere 

 child's play, where they are not broad and ridiculous farces, the butt 

 of students and professors alike. Let some of our colleges inaugurate 

 the reform : lay out a "modern " course for admission and for college 

 on the same general principle as the classical course few subjects, 

 but long-continued and detailed study in each of them and insist on 

 as thorough and vigorous work as they do in their Latin and Greek, 

 and then, after a fair trial, compare results. The friends of " mod- 

 ern " education are willing to abide by the outcome. In the mean 

 time it will be wise for the classicists to avoid quoting reports that 

 have nothing to do with the question, and appealing to authority 

 which, upon investigation, turns out to be squarely on the other side 

 of the point in dispute. 



+ 



EAELY COLONISTS OF THE SWISS LAKES. 



By F. A. FOREL. 



THE depression of the waters of the Lakes of Neufchatel, Morat, 

 and Bienne, which the Swiss Confederation has been having exe- 

 cuted during the last ten years, has been a most fortunate event for 

 archaeologists ; and with pick in hand, and on a relatively new ground, 

 they have been able to recover hosts of treasures from the buried 

 ruins of the lake-villages. The few scattered relics which they had 

 succeeded in fishing up out of the water with tongs and drags have 

 been multiplied into immense proportions since the hunters have been 

 able to work upon the solid land that has been reclaimed from the 

 edges of the favored lakes. By thousands and thousands the relics 

 of human industry have been heaped up in the archaeological collec- 

 tions, and the knowledge of the curious civilization of the early in- 

 habitants of Switzerland has made, by the aid of these facts, very 

 interesting progress. We need only cite, in proof of this, the very 

 important memoir which Professor Theophile Studer has recently 

 published in the "Bulletin" of the Society of Naturalists of Bern. 

 Taking up, after M. L. Rutimeyer, of Basel, the study of the bones 

 found in the archaeological deposit of the palafittes (a term designat- 

 ing a wooden construction built on piles), and making use of the im- 

 mense material collected from the stations of the Lake of Bienne, he 

 has drawn from them most interesting details respecting the variations 

 of the animal population during the different periods of these prehis- 

 torical ages, and respecting the progress of the domestication of the 

 races useful to man. 



