3 io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



taken from the Lakes of Bienne and Neufchatel, and makes the number 

 19,600, more than 5,000 of which are in his own collection. 



The wealth of the Proto-IIelvetians, as Dr. Gross happily calls them, 

 so manifest in the bronze age, was also as real, though less evident, 

 in the stone age. I come to this conclusion from the presence in 

 the ruins of that period of some classes of objects that could have 

 reached the country only by means of a very extensive commerce. 

 Amber was brought to them from the shores of the Baltic Sea, and 

 rare stones of very precious qualities, from which they made their cut- 

 ting-tools, came to them fronrstill farther ; nephrite, a handsome stone, 

 clear, green, and semi-transparent, was brought to them from Turkis- 

 tan, or Southern Siberia ; gray jade-stone came from Burmah ; and 

 chloromela?iite, a black stone with yellow streaks, also probably came 

 from Asia, but from beds that are still unknown. The lake period 

 was of long duration, and included the whole time in which man rose 

 by successive steps from the primitive stages of civilization in which he 

 was not yet acquainted with metals to the higher stages, when he 

 became acquainted with bronze and then with iron. Whatever a cer- 

 tain German school may say about it, the existence of a bronze age 

 intermediate between the stone age and the iron age is demonstrated. 

 That such a progressive and continuous development took place is 

 proved with strong evidence from the archaeological study of the prod- 

 ucts of human industry, and appears definitely in the study of the 

 bones of animals gathered in the ruins of the lake-stations. In this 

 respect, the conclusions of M. Studer are as affirmative and demonstra- 

 tive as were twenty years ago those of M. Riitimeyer. 



Dr. Gross distinguishes three successive periods in the stone age : 

 A primitive, earlier period, making a poor showing of coarse potteries 

 and imperfectly worked stones, with no nephrite or other stones of 

 foreign origin. The station of Chavannes, near La Neuveville, is re- 

 garded by him as the type of that remote age. A second period ex- 

 hibits the civilization of the stone age in all its glory. The stone 

 instruments are finely cut, exotic stones are abundant, and the potter's 

 art has reached an advanced degree of perfection. Locras and Latri- 

 gen represent this age on the Lake of Bienne. A third period bears 

 evidence of the introduction of metals. The general character of the 

 civilization remains the same as in the preceding age, with the same 

 styles of pottery and the same abundance of stone implements. But 

 the first tools of metal have been imported. At Finels, on the Lake of 

 Bienne, we find copper worked in a manner still quite primitive ; and 

 at Morigen, in the station of Les Roseaux, we have bronze in the form 

 of very simple hatchets. After this came the fine age of bronze, with 

 its magnificent development of civilization ; then, later, iron appeared. 



Bronze, the metal chiefly in use in the finest age of the lake civili- 

 zation, is not indigenous. Neither copper nor tin, the metals which 

 alloyed with each other in proper proportions constitute this metal, is 



