GEOLOGY. 283 



few destroyed Londons support the London of the present moment. 

 Even when a town or village is once for all deserted, the process of 

 destruction is rapid. Rain and wind level the walls, dust is whirled 

 into the hollows, buildings melt together, and nothing but a protuber- 

 ance on the plain remains to mark the site of a Babylon or a Nineveh. 

 If, then, this is the fate of cities built in stone or brick, it ceases to be 

 wonderful that monuments of the older races who made their dwell- 

 ings of wood, or, still earlier, of wattled branches, should have alto- 

 gether disappeared on land. The interest of the Swiss discoveries 

 arises from the mitigation, in this particular instance, of the destroy- 

 ing forces. The materials and contents of the huts doubtless sank into 

 the lake from the piles on which they rested, and lay on the bottom in 

 an uncT^stinguishable heap. The belief, indeed, of the Swiss antiqua- 

 ries is that they were violently destroyed at various epochs. But the 

 water into which they fell was still and calm. It did not wash 

 them away, but year after year deposited over them a coat of mud, 

 infinitely thinner and softer than the layers of rubbish which cover 

 the memorials of a later time. The bed of each of these lakes is 

 known, in fact, from independent observations, to be slowly rising ; 

 and, since the recent discoveries, attempts have been made to calcu- 

 late the rate of its elevation, so as to derive approximately the age of 

 the remains from the depth at which they are found. Some frag- 

 ments of a Roman construction in the lake at Yverdun, of which the 

 date is known, have supplied the basis of a calculation which has car- 

 ried back the existence of the most ancient inhabitants of Switzerland 

 to fifteen centuries at least before the Christian era. 



The Swiss antiquaries would not be men of their day if they had 

 not constructed a minute and detailed history of the race they have 

 unburied. Their pursuits, their religions and revolutions are boldly 

 described by their discoverers. Soberer inquirers will limit consider- 

 ably the number of inferences which may be drawn from the remains. 

 These extinct populations may be believed to have been partly agri- 

 cultural, but their chief subsistence was derived, no doubt, from hunt- 

 ing. They had some regular industrial pursuits, for fragments of rude 

 pottery have been found on several sites. That they were engaged in 

 perpetual war is tolerably certain from the quantity of weapons found, 

 and from the very circumstance of their securing themselves from 

 surprise by building their villages on piles in the water. Certain of 

 the monuments seem to have had a religious character, and to betoken 

 some kind of religious belief. As to their history, the only evidence for 

 creating it is identical with that which enables us to infer a certain 

 progress among all the primeval races of Europe. Among the extinct 

 populations of Switzerland, as in those of other parts of Europe, there 

 was an age of flint, an age of bronze, and an age of iron. In certain 

 villages, situated chiefly in Eastern Switzerland, all the utensils are of 

 flint, fashioned by observing the natural cleavage, and the wood used 

 bears the marks of the rude tools which had been long and painfully 

 employed in cutting it. Other sites contain articles of bronze, and 

 the pottery here found is less rude than that discovered among the 

 population of the age of flint; it even presents some traces of a rough 

 ornamentation. The plentifulness of bronze at such a time and in 

 this part of Europe is not a little curious. Both the tin and the cop- 



