ARCHEOLOGY. 383 



It is interesting to find some wooden articles which give an idea of 

 what the industry of the stone age could produce with the imperfect 

 instruments which were at its disposah The wooden handles, ah'eadj 

 spoken of, exhibited at the moment of their discovery — that is to 

 say, before they were dried — a surprising finish. Two handles, termi- 

 nating in a wide knob, were not without some taste. A cup or drink- 

 ing vase of yew wood, about fifteen hues in depth, four inches in 

 length, and twenty-two lines wide, has been cut with great delicacy. 

 One especially interesting article is a fragment of plank, fifteen lines 

 thick, eleven inches long, and between four and five inches Avide. 

 On one of its sides three grooves are cut in the form of a swallow 

 tail, at a distance of between four and five inches from each other; 

 the central one, two inches wide and six lines deep, still retains one 

 of the pegs, intended to join this plank to another. That sort of 

 junction exactly resembles a practice of our own day in some coun- 

 try houses; but this fragment seems to be more likely to have formed 

 part of a door of a cabin, unless, indeed, wooden buildings on 

 our lakes were unknown at so early a period. At the north we have 

 indications of them from the most distant periods; only it is probable 

 that they fastened the planks together otherwise than by. pegs. 

 This piece, carbonized on both sides and on one of its ends, is a relic 

 of the fire. Another fragment, with swallow-tail grooves, also came 

 from the midst of the bed of gravel, as did all the pieces of other plank 

 which bear marks of fire. These planks could scarcely have been 

 procured excepting by splitti!)g the trunk of a tree by means of 

 wedges; the stone axe smoothed away the inequalities, and the chisel 

 served to hollow out the grooves. The junction of those pieces by 

 means of pegs, proves that the art of building was carried much 

 further by the lacustrian populations than we should infer from a mere 

 inspection of their working tools. It is not easy to say what was the 

 purpose of a plank pierced with a square and oblique hole. A piece 

 of wood three inches wide was hollowed out into the form of a pipe 

 or gutter to convey water from a roof, but in drying it lost the form 

 which it had when taken out of the water. Various fragments ap- 

 pear to have been oars, clubs, and other instruments. Some are cut 

 into the form of punches; others, which are in that of wedges, have 

 probably been rounded by rolling in the water; a great number 

 were buried at the same spot amidst the piles. These, as I have 

 already mentioned, show the notches made by the stone axe. Even 

 a large mushroom was brought up from amidst the sands. In 

 the fear that I might not be able to keep sufficiently intact some of 

 the specimens, in spite of the means I employed, I had copies of them 

 made in plaster, which exactly represent their forms before they 

 were altered by drying. 



The drag or dredge recovered from the middle of the artificial bed 

 of Concise a considerable number of teeth and bones of animals, of 

 which I may first mention the vertebra of a fish and a piece of rough 

 epidermis, of what creature I cannot as yet say. Some staghorns 

 are of considerable size, and many of them bear the imprints of the 



