14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lakes, and in peat-bogs near Pfeffikon, Inwyl, Wauwyl, and Moossee- 

 dorf. Often they are grouped into considerable villages, as on Lakes 

 Constance, Neuchatel, Geneva, Zurich, and Morlat. These dwellings 

 are found not only in Switzerland, but also in Bavaria, Carinthia, 

 Moravia, Pomerania, and Mecklenburg, in Germany; and in France, 

 England, Ireland, and the north of Italy. Of these some belong 

 to the Stone age, some to the Bronze age, which we will next de- 

 scribe, and some were inhabited during both the Stone and Bronze 

 ages. 



With the pile-dwellings are to be classed the cranochs or cranogues 

 artificial islands, built upon piles in the peat-bogs and lakes of Ire- 

 land ; the burial-places of Monsheim, near Worms ; and land-stations 

 in wellnigh every country in Europe, as well as in Asia Minor, Syria, 

 Palestine, Japan, Java, India, North Africa, Egypt, and North Ameri- 

 ca. It must not be forgotten, however, that the polished-stone imple- 

 ments of some of these various localities may belong to later times, 

 as there are now living tribes at about the grade of culture that was 

 attained in the Stone age.^ At Grand-Presigny, south of Tours, and 

 at Charbonnieres, in the Macon district, are places abounding with 

 the nuclei of flint-boulders, and articles made therefrom in every stage 

 of finish, with many spoiled in making places evidently once devoted 

 to this manufacture. Some caves in the departments of Yonne and 

 Ariege show layers of loam upon calcareous tufa, the human and ani- 

 mal remains of each of which are exactly those of the successive ages 

 we have discussed, viz., of the Mammoth, of the Reindeer, and of Pol- 

 ished Stone. That is, they constitute a succession of deposits, each 

 with its peculiar animal remains, and hence ofi^er the same kind of 

 evidence as to their relative antiquity as do the older geological 

 strata. 



And like the earlier geological eras, the various ages of prehistoric 

 human existence are not sharply defined and severed, each from 

 the preceding and succeeding one, but one merges into the other 

 by gradual progressions of thousands of years. Not only certain 

 species of plants and animals, but entire races of man, have thus 

 slowly vanished from off the earth, or retreated to lands far remote, 

 while others have as gradually come in to occupy their places. 

 Some animal species, as for instance Speller's Borken-thier^ the 

 dodo, and the auk or great diver, have died out within historic times; 

 others in very recent times, as for example the huge birds of New 



^ Long after metals were in common use among them, many ancient peoples (of 

 which the Jews were one, as the Bible informs us) employed stone knives in all religious 

 sacrifices, etc. The Indians of North America and the Greenlanders yet use stone imple- 

 ments exactly similar to those of the lake-dwellings. 



^ Literally, bark-ani>7ial, or bark-eater, as we would say in English. I am utterly at a 

 loss for the English or scientific synonym. The best guess I can offer is that it is a 

 Castoroid, or Castor proper possibly the giant beaver of the species Discopyhis. {See 

 Dana, " Geology," pp. 562, 563.) Trans. 



