GEOGRAPHY AND ANTIQUITIES. 361 



Peas, apples, pears, and some stone fruit have been founrl. 



The apples are chiefly cut into two parts; seldom into three : 

 the smaller ones are left whole. The sour crabs must have been 

 of considerable importance as an article of food, as we may learn 

 from the large quantity of their remains, and their general diffu- 

 sion amongst the lake dwellings. Together with these wild 

 apples, there were found at Robenhausen a considei-able number 

 of a larger kind, which probably were a cultivated variety. Pears 

 must have been less common, for only a few specimens have been 

 found at Wangcm and Robenhausen. Remains of the cherry, 

 plum, sloe, grape, and variclus berries, were also found. 



The lake colonists had therefore the same cereals as the Egyji- 

 tians. They were also clothed in the same manner, for in Egypt 

 flax took the first place amongst the plants used for spinning and 

 weaving. The cultivation of flax, and the art of weaving the 

 thread, may frequently be seen on the Egyptian mural paintings, 

 while hemp was unknown as a jilant for making thread ; and it is 

 also entirely unknown in the remains of the lake dwellings. 



He thinks the antiquity of these dwellings is probabl}^ from 

 1,000 to 2,000 years b. o. 



In any case, the remains of plants have a veiy high antiquitj', 

 and they throw some light on the solution of the question whether 

 the species of plants have undergone any change in historic time. 

 With respect to the wild plants, the question must be answered in 

 the negative. The most careful investigation of them shows a 

 surprising agi'eement with the recent species, and even small 

 varieties of form have been retained, as we see in the water-lily, 

 the fir, the sloe, the bird-cherry, and the hazel-nut. Professor 

 Unger has come to the same result by investigating the Egyptian 

 plants. But the case is different with the cultivated plants, 

 although some kinds — as the dense compact wheat and the close 

 six-rowed barley — have undergone no perceptible change; yet 

 it must be confessed that most of them agree with no recent forms 

 sufliciently to allow of their being classed together. The small 

 Celtic beans, the peas, the small lake-dwelling barle}', the Egyp- 

 tian and the small lake-dwelling wheat, and the two-rowed wheat, 

 form peculiar and apjiarently extinct races : they are distinguished 

 for the most part from the modern cultivated kinds by smaller 

 seeds. Man has, therefore, in course of time, produced sorts 

 which give a more a))undant j'ield, and these have gradually sup- 

 planted the old varieties. 



The following are the conclusions drawn by Professor Ruti- 

 meyer from the animal remains of these dwellings : — 



This seems to be the first place where we can no longer strive 

 against the evidence of a European population who used as food 

 not only the urus and the bison, but also the mammoth and the 

 rhinoceros, and who left the remains of their feasts not only to be 

 gnawed by the wolf and the fox, but also by the tiger and the 

 hyasna. It is, in truth, an old ps3'chological experience, that we 

 always consider that to be really i)rimitive which we see the far- 

 thest removed from us, and this in spile of numerous adnnMiititms 

 which are continually pointing out to us stations lying farther and 

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