358 



PALAFITTE3, OR LACUSTRIAN CONSTRUCTIONS 



the form of pointed iustruments (Figs. S, 9) whicli might have served for pon- 

 iards, lances, or pikes; others are in the form of chisels (Fig. 10) or of pins for 

 the hair, (Fig. 11.) The flakes of silex weve employed by way of a knife or 



Fifrure 7, 



Fia-ur 



Fifrure 9. 



Fig-iire 10. 



Figure 11. 



saw ; we find many inserted in a fragment of horn, which were probably used in 

 felling trees or cutting their branches, (Fig. 12.) 



% 



Figure 12. 



If these utensils cannot rival those of the age of stone in the north of Europe, 

 if we possess none of those poniards artistically wrought which occur in the 

 collections of Denmark and Mecklenburg, nor those elegantly formed knives of 

 silex which recall the finest produced by the age of bronze, it is not the less 

 ti'ue that we can realize a degree of emulation as having existed at this remote 

 epoch between the inhabitants of different stations. The objects collected in 

 the lakes of western Switzerland display something of finish, of care in the de- 

 tails, which is not to be I'ecoguized to the same degree in the stations of eastern 

 Switzerland. This observation is particularly suggested by the symmetry and 

 pleasing forms of certain objects which would have been equally as efficient 

 without being so finished. The hammers are the articles of most el(>gance ; 

 they are always formed of hard stone, generally of serpentine, enlarged in the 

 middle in order that tlie hole destim-d to receive the handle may not render 

 them too fragile ; one of the extremities is rounded or plane — the other con- 

 tracted more or less to an edge, and sometimes to a point. The hole itself is 

 often irregular, being narrowed within, as an aperture would be if alternately 



