22 EEMAINS OF MAMMALIA, WILD AND DOMESTICATED, CHAP. IT. 



not so much decayed as are those of the stone period ; the 

 latter having wasted down quite to the level of the mud, 

 whereas the piles of the bronze age (as in the Lake of Bienne, 

 for example) still project above it. 



Professor Kiitimeyer of Basle, well known to paleontologists 

 as the author of several important memoirs on fossil verte- 

 brata,. has recently published a scientific description of 

 great interest of the animal remains dredged up at various 

 stations where they had been embedded for ages in the mud 

 into which the piles were driven.* 



These bones bear the same relation to the primitive 

 inhabitants of Switzerland and some of their immediate 

 successors as do the contents of the Danish ' refuse-heaps ' to 

 the ancient fishing and hunting tribes who lived on the 

 shores of the Baltic. 



The list of wild mammalia enumerated in this excellent 

 treatise contains no less than twenty-four species, exclusive of 

 several domesticated ones : besides which there are eighteen 

 species of birds, the wild swan, goose, and two species of ducks 

 being among them ; also three reptiles, including the eatable 

 frog and fresh- water tortoise ; and lastly, nine species of fresh 

 water fish. All these (amounting to fifty-four species) are 

 with one exception still living in Europe. The exception 

 is the wild bull (Bos primigenius), which, as before stated, 

 survived in historical times. The following are the mammalia 

 alluded to : The bear ( Ursus Arctos), the badger, the com 

 mon marten, the polecat, the ermine, the weasel, the otter, 

 wolf, fox, wild cat, hedgehog, squirrel, field-mouse (Mus syl- 

 vaticus), hare, beaver, hog (comprising two races, namely, the 

 wild boar and swamp-hog), the stag (Cervus Elephas), the 

 roe-deer, the fallow-deer, the elk, the steinbock (Capra Ibex), 

 the chamois, the Lithuanian bison, and the wild bull. The 



* Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz. Basel, 1861. 



