Of Western Europe. 1 1 



bronze epoch abound chiefly with bones of domestic 

 animals. In the first, fox bones are common. In the 

 others, they are few; and skeletons of a large variety of 

 dog appear. Now these different successive stages of 

 society, — though not the pure result of spontaneous ef- 

 fort and development of these people, but stimulated 

 and hastened by intercourse with more advanced nations, 

 — must still represent a period of long duration. 



How long this duration was, can not, of course, be 

 determined ; but suggestions, which are something 

 more than guesses, have been made. The absence of 

 cat, mouse, or rat, and still more, the entire absence of 

 the domestic fowl, which was introduced into Greece in 

 the time of Pericles, and is first known in Italy by 

 coins struck about a hundred years before Christ, and 

 the presence of the sweet cherry, which was introduced 

 into Italy from the East by Lucullus, fix one limit. 

 These settlements did not last after about the begin- 

 ning of the Christian era. On the other hand, the re- 

 mains of birds found are precisely such as are found in 

 Switzerland now. The wild plants and trees of their 

 day are identical, in the minutest particular, with the 

 flora of the same localities at the present day. The 

 bones of only two animals are found that do not live in 

 Switzerland now: the urus, or great ox; and the au- 

 rochs, or bison. Caesar saw both of these in Germany, 

 where, indeed, they did not wholly perish till the mid- 

 dle ages ; and although the urus is now extinct, the 

 bison is still preserved in a forest in Lithuania, for the 

 special hunting sports of the Czars. Hence, whatever 

 date may be assigned to the origin of these settlements, 

 it must be within the present geological epoch. 



