AECH^OLOGY. 355 



earth. Where historical monuments and written testimonies fail, 

 there it is that the function of the geologist begins. He explores 

 these beds deposited by the waters one grain of sand after another; 

 he exhumes the gnawed bones, the pottery, the relics of every kind 

 long stored up in the archives of the strata; and the examination of 

 these objects suffices him for the retrieval from oblivion of engulphed 

 populations. Thanks to his researches, the history of man in the 

 countries of western Europe is removed backward two thousand 

 years. Henceforth it is a fact assured to science, that a race of 

 hunters, of agriculturists, and of artisans, lived in Helvetia eight or 

 ten centuries before the war of Troy, and commenced with the tribes 

 established in Germany and on the coasts of the Baltic. The field 

 of natural history is equally aggrandized; for, if the mammoth and 

 other animals cotemporary with the races of men had long disap- 

 peared, the bison, the great elk, the wild goat, the beaver, still in- 

 habited the forests of central Europe. Finally, we learn a fact of 

 the greatest importance for the history of the globe itself, namely, 

 that the climate of Helvetia has not sensibly varied since four 

 thousand years ago. The trees and plants which grow to-day in that 

 region grew there then; the same fruits, cultivated and wild, served 

 for human aliment; the sole difference revealed by the study of the 

 remains of the age of stone is, that the water-caltrop (trapa natans) 

 and the dwarf water lily, which exist no longer in the lakes of Swit- 

 zerland, then grew there in abundance. This equality of climate 

 during a period of forty centuries is a serious objection to the hypo- 

 thesis of polar deluges first proposed by M. Adhemar, and since de- 

 veloped by MM. Le Hon and De Jouvencel. 



II. 



Articles made of metal were not absolutely unknown to the lacus- 

 trians at the close of the first age, as is shown by some relics found 

 at Obermeilen and Concise; but the perfection, as well as rarity of 

 the objects discovered, evince that they came from abroad, whether 

 in the way of exchange or through the chances of war. It would 

 be absurd to suppose that those primitive tribes had proceeded fully 

 prepared to the fabrication of bronze without having previously 

 availed themselves of copper and tin. The phenomenon of an alloy 

 of the two metals can only be explained by the arrival of a new 

 people bringing with them a new civilization. In Hindostan, in 

 Central Asia, in America, the age of copper succeeded slowly and 

 gradually to the age of stone — the age of bronze, in turn, replaced 

 by degrees the age of copper; but in Helvetia, as well as in all 

 western Europe, this latter period is not represented: the bronze 

 abruptly follows the stone. It is because two races had come into 

 collision. The end of the first age must have been marked by terrible 

 events. In almost all the lacustrian villages the verge of the two 

 epochs is sharply indicated by the burning of dwellings and the 

 massacre of the people. The intruders, probably of the Celtic stock, 

 wielded axes of metal, and by virtue of the superiority of their arms 



