\ ARCHEOLOGY. 357 



important villages. The city of Zurich covers a lacustrian settlement 

 of the age of stone; during the age of bronze a village on piles might 

 have been seen on the site of the present city of Geneva. 



Once in possession of metal, industry attained a great superiority 

 over that of the preceding period, but a resemblance subsists in the 

 form and nature of its products. The axe continues to be the faithful 

 comrade of the warrior, and the artist employs all his skill in decora- 

 ting it. To this arm of battle new instruments of death are added, 

 the sword of bronze and the mace of stone; but arrows have become 

 very rare, which proves that instead of engaging in combat at a dis- 

 tance, like their fathers, the natives were accustomed to march straight 

 up to the enemy and fight face to face. They had not forgotten the 

 use of incendiary projectiles. Among the industrial remains of that 

 age we find in like manner knives, reaping hooks, stones for grinding 

 and sharpening, needles, pins, weaver's shuttles, fish hooks, quoits, 

 toys, ear-drops, ornaments in rock crystal, pieces of amber, necklaces 

 of glass and of jet. The potter's ware resembles that of the age of 

 stone, and is composed of an analogous paste, mixed most frequently 

 with small silicious pebbles. Yet the art of the potter has made in- 

 contestable progress: the variety of forms is greater and the orna- 

 ments more numerous. All the settlements of any importance had 

 their manufactory of earthenware, as is proved by the specimens 

 which have been disfigured in baking and rejected as unmarketable. 

 There were special manufactories for instruments of bronze, for an 

 elegant mould for hatchets has been discovered at Morges and real 

 fbunderies at Echallens, in the canton of Yaud, and at Dovaine, near 

 Thonon. Moreover a bar of tin which was taken from among the 

 piles of Estavayer proves that the bronze was not imported from 

 abroad in a state of alloyage. The people of Helvetia knew how to 

 procure raw metals, and those valleys of the Alps, which even during 

 the age of stone had been a centre of commerce, on the one side with 

 the Baltic and on the other with the Mediterranean, now exchanged 

 their products with the islands of the Cassiterides. Agriculture de- 

 veloped itself simultaneously with commerce, and it was probably to 

 the progress made in the production of alimentary commodities that 

 the population owed its marked increase. The breeding of domestic 

 animals equally augmented in importance, and the horse, scarcely 

 represented in the age of stone, appeared now in numbers. 



The advances of the lacustrian colonies appear not to have deeply 

 modified their religion. After the invasion of the Celts, the priests, 

 faithful to ancient usages, rejected the metal introduced by the pro- 

 fane tribes, and continued to make use of instruments of stone, as in 

 the primitive age. The erratic blocks ceased not to be true altars, 

 as is testified by the numerous objects brought together from neigh- 

 boring settlements occupied only during the age of bronze: among 

 these venerated blocks are cited the stone of Cour, situated in Lake 

 Leman, below Lausanne; the stones at Niton, which form islets at a 

 short distance from Geneva, and not far from Estavayer, in Lake 

 Neuchatel;the Pierre au Mariage, on which, even in the last century, 

 the betrothed went to swear mutual fidelity. If the religion of the 



