The President’s Address. 13 
but by hundreds and thousands, I might say tens of thousands, 
attest the important part which has been played by stone in the 
early stages of the development of the human race. For our know- 
ledge of this period we are mainly indebted, firstly, to the shell- 
mounds or refuse heaps of Denmark, so well studied by Steenstrup 
and Worsaae; secondly, to the tumuli or burial mounds; thirdly, 
to the remains found in caves; and fourthly, to the Swiss 
lake dwellings, first made known to us by Keller, and after- 
wards studied with so much zeal and ability by Morlot, Troyon, 
Desor, Schwab, and other Swiss archeologists. From these 
sources we get some idea of the conditions of life existing during 
the Stone Age. The use of pottery was known, but the potter’s 
wheel does not seem to have been as yet discovered. Man was 
clothed in skins, but partly also, in all probability, in garments 
made of flax. His food was derived principally from animals killed 
in the chase, but he had probably domesticated the ox as well as the 
goat, the pig and the dog; nor was he altogether ignorant of agri- 
eulture. Traces of dwellings of this period have been found in 
various parts of England; and in this county, the curious circular 
depressions at Stourhead, known as the “ Pen Pits,” perhaps belong to 
it. These dwellings seem to have consisted of pits sunk into the 
ground, which were probably covered by a roof consisting of branches 
of trees, over which again a coating of turf and earth may probably 
have been placed. The Swiss lake dwellings of this period were 
constructed on platforms supported on piles driven into the muddy 
bottom of the lakes, and in some cases still further supported by 
having stones heaped up round them. In one case a large canoe 
has been met with, which was evidently wrecked while on its way 
to one of the lake settlements, loaded with a freight of such stones. 
It must be admitted, indeed, that our knowledge of the Stone Age 
is still scanty, fragmentary, and unsatisfactory ; on the other hand, 
the stone weapons and implements found in Europe so very closely 
resemble those in use amongst various races of existing savages that 
they give us vivid, and I think to a great extent accurate, ideas of 
the mode of life which prevailed at that distant period; distant in- 
deed it was, according to the ideas of chronology which almost 
