CHAr. II. IN SWISS LAKE-DWELLINOS. 23 



domesticated species comprise the dog, liorse, ass, pig, goat, 

 sheei^, and several bovine races. 



The greater number, if not all, of tliese animals served for 

 food, and all tlie bones which contained marrow have Ijeen 

 split open in the same way as the corresponding ones found 

 in the shell-mounds of Denmark before mentioned. The bones 

 both of the wild bull and the bison are invariably split in this 

 maimer. As a rule, the lower jaws with tcctli occur in gi-eater 

 abundance than any other parts of the slccleton, — a circum- 

 stance which, geologists know, holds good in regard to fossil 

 mammalia of all periods. As yet the reindeer is missing 

 in tlie Swiss lake-settlements as in the Danish "refuse-heaps," 

 altliough this animal in more ancient times ranged over 

 France, together with tlie mammotli, as far south as tlie 

 Pyrenees. 



A careful comparij^on of the bones from different sites has 

 shown that in settlements such as Wangen and Moosseedorf, 

 belonging to the earliest age of stone, when the habits of the 

 hunter state predominated over those of the pastoral, venison, 

 or the flesh of the stag and i-oe, was more eaten than the flesh 

 of the domestic cattle and sheep. This was afterwards re- 

 versed in the later stone period and in the age of bronze. At 

 that later period also the tame pig, which is wanting in some 

 of the oldest stations, had rcj)laced the wild boar as a common 

 article of food. In the beginning of the age of stone, in 

 Switzerland, the goats outnumbered the sheep, but towards 

 the close of the same period the sheep were more abundant 

 than the goats. 



The fox in the first era was very common, but it nearly 

 disappears in the bronze age, during which period a large 

 bunting-dog, supposed to have been imported into Switzer- 

 land fi'om some foreign country, becomes the chief repre- 

 sentative of the canine genus. 



A single fragment of the bone of a hare {Lep^ua timidus) 



•6 



