20 STONE AND BRONZE IMPLEMENTS. chap. ii. 



and three and a half feet wide, was found capsized at the 

 bottom of the Lake of Bienne. It ajopears to have been 

 laden with stones, such as were used to raise the foundation 

 of some of the artificial islands. 



It is believed that as many as 300 wooden huts were 

 sometimes comprised in one settlement, and that they may 

 have contained about 1000 inhabitants. At Wangen, M. 

 Lohle has calculated that 40,000 piles were used, probably 

 not all planted at one time nor by one generation. Among 

 the works of great merit devoted specially to a description of 

 the Swiss lake-habitations is that of M. Troyon, published in 

 18G0.* The number of sites which he and other authors 

 have already enumerated in Switzerland is truly wondcx-ful. 

 They occur on the large lakes of Constance, Zurich, Geneva, 

 and JMeufchatel, and on most of the smaller ones. Some are 

 exclusively of the stone age, others of the bronze period. Of 

 these last more than twent}^ are spoken of on the Lake of 

 Geneva alone, twelve on that of Neufchatel, and ten on the 

 small Lake of Bienne. 



One of the sites first studied by the Swiss antiquaries was 

 the small Lake of Moosseedorf, near Berne, where imple- 

 ments of stone, horn, and bone, but none of metal, were 

 obtained. Although the flint here employed must have come 

 from a distance (probably from the South of France), the 

 chippings of the material are in such profusion as to imply 

 that there was a manufactory of implements on the spot. 

 Here also, as in several other settlements, hatchets and 

 wedges of jade have been observed of a kind said not to 

 occur in Switzerland or the adjoining parts of Eurojje, and 

 which some minei^alogists would fain derive from the East; 

 amber also, which, it is supjiosed, was imported from the 

 shores of the Baltic. 



At Wangen near Stein, on the Lake of Constance, another 



* Sur Ics Habitations lacustrcs. 



