26 NO EXTINCT SPECIES OF MAMMAL. chap. n. 



extirpation of the elk and beaver, and the gradual reduction 

 in numbers of the beai*, stag, roe, and fresh-water tortoise 

 are distinctly perceptible. The aurochs, or Lithuanian bison, 

 appears to have died out in Switzerland about the time when 

 weapons of bronze came into use. It is only in a few of the 

 most modern lake-dwellings, such as Noville and Chavannes 

 in the Canton de Yaud (which the antiquaries refer to the 

 sixth century), that some traces are observable of the do- 

 mestic cat, as well as of a sheep with crooked horns, and 

 with them bones of the domestic fowl. 



After the sixth century, no extinction of any wild quad- 

 ruped nor introduction of any tame one appears to have taken 

 place, but the fauna was still modified by the wild species con- 

 tinuing to diminish in number and the tame ones to become 

 more diversified by breeding and crossing, especially in the 

 case of the dog, horse, and sheep. On the whole, however, 

 the divergence of the domestic races from their aboriginal 

 wild types, as exemplified at Wangen and Moosseedorf, is con- 

 fined, according to Professor Eiitimeyer, within narrow limits. 

 As to the goat, it has remained nearly constant and true to 

 its pristine form, and the small race of goat-horned sheep 

 still lingers in some Alpine valleys in the Upper Ehine; and 

 in the same region a race of pigs, coi-responding to the do- 

 mesticated variety of Sus Scrofa palustris, may still be seen. 



Amidst all this profusion of animal remains extremely few 

 bones of man have been discovered; and only one skull, 

 dredged up from Meilen, on the Lake of Zurich, of the early 

 stone period, seems as yet to have been carefully examined. 

 Respecting this specimen, Professor His observes that it ex- 

 hibits, instead of the small and rounded form proper to the 

 Danish peat-mosses, a type much more like that now pre- 

 vailing in Switzerland, which is intermediate between the 

 long-headed and short-headed form.* 



•:'" Rutimeyer, Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in tier Scbweiz, p. 181. 



