330* ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



known people, near the shores of several lakes in Switzerland and France. 

 The Revue Archceoloyique of Paris noticed the first discoveries in 18-34-55, 

 tind the January number of 1800 gives the results of later researches, with 

 drawings of fifteen kinds of tools, weapons, etc., which have been found by 

 hundreds. They have edges and points of stone, with handles of deers' 

 horns, and have been preserved by being covered with water and the depos- 

 its of earth. Remains of piles and rough planks have been dug out, in 

 railroad excavations, which have led the best archaeologists to the following 

 conclusions : there was a people who inhabited at least that part of Europe 

 long before the historic period, who had no metals, and used stones, and 

 sometimes bones, for tools, ornaments, implements, and weapons of various 

 kinds, with deers' horns for handles to such as needed them. Some of these 

 ancient people lived in small communities, in houses built on platforms of 

 plank resting on piles, extending from the shores of lakes some distance 

 over the water, from which they doubtless drew fish for their subsistence; 

 but they had also a variety of other food. Specimens of pottery are found, 

 generally cylindrical, and some with round bases, without feet; some have 

 two holes for suspending them. Small bowls have been found, made of 

 deers' horns. The numerous bones of animals discovered afford an interest- 

 ing study of the fauna of the country at the remotest period of which there 

 are any traces. 



More recent lake habitations of the same kind have been found, where 

 instruments of copper were found mingled with those of stone; and there 

 are indications that the race which introduced the copper (probably Celts) 

 conquered the original inhabitants. 



M. Gastalde has recently communicated to the Academy of Sciences at 

 Turin an account of an exploration of a large peat moor, in the neighbor- 

 hood of Lake Maggiore, in Northern Italy, made in connection with Professor 

 Dcsor, of Neufchatel, to ascertain whether it contained any traces of sub- 

 aqueous structures, such as have been found since 1814 in some of the lakes 

 in Switzerland. Although unsuccessful in this respect, they found several 

 fragments of pottery, and a canoe made of the trunk of a tree, all imbedded 

 in peat, at the depth of a metre (thirty-nine inches). The antiquity assigned 

 by the discoverers to these fragments, judging from the uniform accumulation 

 of so great an amount of peat above the canoe, is at least one hundred years 

 before the foundation of Rome. 



On the Flint Implements found in the Drift. Tn a paper read before the 

 Geological Society, London, June, IS.'JO, by Mr. Mackie, F. G. S., on the 

 above subject, the author pointed out the evidence which exists that the 

 flints thus found are worked by the hand of men, alluding especially to the 

 uniform characteristics which are to be observed in the manner in which 

 the flints, wherever discovered, are trimmed. This trimming is peculiar, and 

 its constant recurrence negatives the inference that it could have been pro- 

 duced by any ordinary geological causes. He then dwelt upon the positions 

 in which the flints have been found, from which it was apparent that they 

 are, whatever their age may be, of the same age as the drift in which they 

 are imbedded, and are in every sense of the word fossil. Mr. Mackie then 

 noticed the flint.flakes which have been discovered, and showed clearly that 

 the peculiar uniform shape of these can be accounted for only on the suppo- 

 sition that they have been chipped off some larger block in a regular man- 

 ner, and with some definite purpose. He pointed out the great geographical 

 area over which these flints have been observed, and then adverted to the 



