336 GENERAL VIEWS ON ARCHEOLOGY. 



Considering these facts, it is quite likely that the analogies between 

 the ancient domestic races of Switzerland and those of the north may 

 be carried out still further. 



The polar regions and high mountains are naturally enough places 

 of refuge for the ancient races, who are driven into them by the pres- 

 sure exercised by new comers, who spread themselves out into the more 

 fertile and more easily accessible regions. This is so with man, as it 

 is with many of the lower animal species. The reindeer, for instance, 

 and the great penguin, are generally supposed to be indigenous to 

 high latitudes, just as the wood grouse is reputed to belong to high 

 mountainous districts. And yet, from all that can be observed, it is 

 merely because they have held their ground there longer in spite of 

 the encroachments of man, who has exterminated them in more ac- 

 cessible regions. 



The reindeer gives occasion for a rjeculiar remark. Where this ani- 

 mal has passed, the cow refuses to browse, thereby establishing an 

 antagonism, that leads sometimes to deadly conflict, between the agri- 

 cultural settlers of the north of Sweden and the nomadic Laplanders, 

 who breed the reindeer. We can easily conceive, therefore, that the 

 fact of the introduction of a domestic bovine race may have caused the 

 destruction of the reindeer in the temperate regions of Europe, where 

 it has existed, not only in Denmark, as we have already seen, but also 

 in France, Belgium, 1 England, 2 and Switzerland. 3 It is, however, 

 well to remark that the remains of the reindeer found hitherto, might 

 very well belong to the glacial epoch, and might consequently all be 

 anterior to the advent of man in Europe. 



We may therefore foresee what singular interest, in an antiquarian 

 point of view, must attach to the polar and the alpine regions, and 

 what important questions will yet find their solution in the last men- 

 tioned countries. 



VI. CHRONOLOGICAL QUESTION. 



State of the Question. The general chronology of the three great 

 phases in the development of civilization in Europe, called the age of 

 stone, the age of bronze, and the age of iron, is purely relative, like the 

 chronology of the geological formations. It is not known when the age 

 of stone or that of bronze, or even that of iron, commenced, nor how 

 long a time each of them lasted. We merely know that what belongs 

 to the age of bronze succeeded the order of things of the age of stone, 

 and preceded that event, so important to the destinies of mankind, the 

 introduction of the manufacture of iron. This is itself a great deal, 

 for it is but a short time since nothing at all was known of what had 



1 Pictet. Treatise on Palaeontology. Geneva, 1853, vol. 1, p. 356. 



2 Owen. A History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds. London, 1846, p. 479. 

 3 Bullctin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sciences Naturelle. December, 1859. 



