548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Yorkshire. It is, however, worthy of remark that it is only in the ex- 

 ceptional cases in which the body is turned into adipocere (an unctuous, 

 waxy substance), that woolen cloth is found ; in normal circumstances 

 that fabric would disappear far more rapidly than linen. 



The bronze remains found in the Rhone Valley prove that the art 

 of metal-working, once acquired, was carried by these early races to 

 great perfection. They were acquainted with the processes of casting, 

 tempering, stamping, and engraving metal. With this discovery of a 

 new art came a simultaneous improvement in the potter's craft ; the 

 rude cups of the Neolithic age disappear, and are succeeded by vessels 

 of an endless variety of form and ornamentation, some of which are 

 extremely beautiful. Some of the vases are inlaid with tin, others 

 are marked with the same patterns employed to decorate the Etruscan 

 vases of Italy ; while others, found in the pile-dwellings of the Lake 

 of Bourget, have representations of men and animals. The collections 

 of bronze jewelry are also abundant and curious. They consist of 

 bracelets, armlets, long hairpins with decorated heads, rings, ear-rings, 

 girdles adorned with pendants, brooches, buttons, studs and torques 

 for the neck. War being in these early days as common as it appears 

 to be in more modern times, we find well-stored armories, comprising 

 battle-axes, arrows, and clubs, lances and short swords, as also helmets 

 and shields of thin plates of hammered bronze. Their graves resemble 

 those of their Neolithic predecessors, with one important difference — 

 dead bodies were burned as a rule instead of buried, the ashes, inclosed 

 in urns, being placed in the tombs. 



In the lake-dwellings of eastern Switzerland the implements found 

 are of bone and stone ; but in those of western Switzerland there are 

 rich accumulations of bronze implements and utensils ; while in the 

 upper layers of debris iron begins to appear ; showing how in its turn 

 the bronze was supplanted by a metal still more universally useful, 

 and destined to be the type of a grand era of enlightenment and prog- 

 ress. Almost as interesting and instructive as the lake-dwellings of 

 Switzerland are the Danish kitchen-middens or shell-mounds, refuse- 

 heaps which have accumulated round the tents or huts of the primi- 

 tive population. Many of these have been examined ; and rude flasks, 

 sling-stones, axes, flint fragments, and the bones of various animals, 

 have been obtained from them. 



In primeval times, many animals were abundant in our own coun- 

 try and all over Europe, which seem gradually to have disappeared. 

 Some of these enumerated by Sir John Lubbock are the cave-bear, the 

 cave-hyena, the cave-lion, the mammoth, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, 

 the hippopotamus, the musk-ox, the Irish elk, the wild-horse, the glut- 

 ton, the reindeer, the auroeh, and the urus or wild-ox. Simultane- 

 ously with these or with some of these were human beings, who har- 

 bored in caves, and whose skeletons are found in caverns mixed up 

 with the bones of these animals, and with stone or bronze implements. 



