22 Address of the President. 



ety, aud will repay perusal and comparison with what we 

 have been doing. Sir John Lubbock in " Pre-historic 

 Times" — not pretending to be an original work — presents 

 you with an excellent summary of information, and has a 

 chapter specially upon the " Ancient Lake Habitations of 

 Switzerland ;" and it will have been seen that our Society, 

 follov/ing the example or affected as by an epidemic, has 

 devoted a great portion of its time and the direction of its 

 excursions to the exploration of the lochs within its range, 

 and not without success. From all the information that has 

 come to us of these curious buildings they have been of very 

 ancient origin as well as of comparatively modern use among 

 European nations, while among some uncivilized tribes such 

 dwellings are at present inhabited. Some curious questions 

 arise as to the use of all the different forms of them, and of 

 the manner in which they were built or constructed. 



The larger erections, or where there have been several 

 placed together like villages, as those of the Swiss lakes or at 

 Dowalton, were the natural habitations and defences of early 

 tribes. They knew no enemy except some neighbouring 

 tribe as ignorant as themselves or the wild animals of the 

 country, the attacks of which they Avere able to cope with. 

 So it is that we find the same kinds of habitations used in 

 New Guinea and elsewhere at the present day. It was very 

 natural for the early inhabitants of a country or for tribes 

 now living without any intercourse with civilization to build 

 themselves structures raised above an element always chosen 

 as a defensive one, and where they were not easily approach- 

 ed or entered when the access passage was drawn in or 

 removed. They were the residences, or as it might be the 

 refuge from danger. Their moveable access the analogue of 

 the^^more modern but disused drawbridge ; and we had the 

 evidences of their living there by the utensils, weapons, 

 ornaments, and remains of a varied commissariat which we 

 can still gather in and around them. 



The large Irish crannogs, again, are known historically 

 to have been the strongholds of petty Irish chiefs, but it is 



