312 STUDY OF HIGH ANTIQUITY. 



iugs in Switzerland.* Allowing that the bones in question ai-o too few and 

 insufficient to admit of very satisfactory conclusions, the learned professor 

 makes out the ox, goat, sheep, pig, and dog, all domestic, and with characters 

 which seem to point to the end of the stone age, or to the beginning of the 

 bronze age. Weighing all the different circumstances, and avoiding imdire 

 precision, Ave may consider this third bed as belonging to the stone age, although 

 the author, who explored it diligently, has not had the good fortune to discover 

 in it any stone hatchet or other antiquity of that sort. At one spot, on the 

 southern side of the cone, some charcoal was found in a bed of gravel one foot 

 lower than the above mentioned layer of the stone age; consequently, at 20 

 feet (or, to be exact, at G.09 metres) below the actual surface of the cone. It is 

 worthy of note, as the art of baking bricks and tiles is generally allowed to 

 have been introduced into the country by the liomans, that below the line of 

 the Roman period the author never discovered the slightest trace of bricks or 

 tiles. 



Towards the central region of the cone, where the cutting was deepest, the 

 three beds in question disappeared ; naturally enough, as it was here that tht5 

 torrent's action was most violent, easily washing away any mould which might 

 have formed on the surface. As the torrent, in deviating to the right and left of 

 its central current, lost some of its power and drifted less coarse matter, it would 

 be more apt to overlay with new deposits, without abrading a layer of mould 

 or earth formed since the preceding inundations. Quite in accordance with 

 this there was found in the gravel on the southern side of the cone, at a spot 

 where the mould bed of the bronze age had quite disappeared, but still 10 feet 

 below the present surface, a hatchet-knife of bronze, considerably oxydized, 

 and a well-preserved bronze hatchet which had evidently not been worn by the 

 movement of the water. The specitic weight of these two objects must havo 

 kept them in place, while the earth which surrounded them was probably swept 

 away by the torrent. Though the three beds of ancient mould disappeared 

 thus in the centre of the cone, they reappeared symmetrically on the other or 

 northern side. But here they stood at a greater depth beneath the present 

 surface, because the torrent, as we have seen, accumulated its alluvium on this 

 side. Yet here, also, the beds were pai-allel to each other, and the vertical dis- 

 tances which sepai'ated them were the same as on the other side of the axis, in 

 the southern part of the cone. There was, in the northern part of the cuttings 

 a depth of G feet from the lloman bed to the base of the bronze bed, and 10 teet 

 from this last to the bed of the stone age. It was impossible to mistake these 

 three beds, or to confound them one with another. The stone-age bed Avas too 

 little interrupted in the central region to allow the observer to deviate from its 

 proper line of prolongation. The ba'onze-age bed Avas interrupted to a greater 

 (ixtent, but on both sides of the cone it Avas equally characterized by being 

 formed of clayey earth of a bluish color, someAvhat similar to the blue glacial 

 mud, and bordered towards its upper and loAver limit by more sandy zones, 

 colored yelloAV by hydroxyde of iron. This Avas remarkable, and evidently 

 indicated some peculiar cause. The stone-age bed sometimes bore a similar 

 aspect, but only occasionally and not so regularly as the bronze bed. The 

 Homan formation on the northern side Avas only recognized by its height above 

 the bronze-age bed; no fragments of Iloman tiles Avere found here, but it av;is 

 only laid open over a short space, about 40 feet along the railAvay line, AA'hilst 

 the bronze-age bed Avas regularly and distinctly folloAved on the northern side, 

 over a distance of 200 feet.t 



* Rutimeyer, Die Fauna der Pfaldbauten der Schwciz. Basel, 1861. 



\ The intersection of the bronze-age stratum with the masonry of the bridge, Avhich 

 conveys the torrent over the railway, has been marked on the eastern side, opposite the lake, 

 by a thick line of reddish paint. It is easily discovered in passing in the railway train, being 

 at the height of the Avindows of the passenger carriages. 



