PREHISTORIC ENGINEERING AT LAKE COPAIS. 209 



The final result of all this solicitude for the health of the sol- 

 diers, who are the choice youth of the entire nation, is twofold : 



First, the steady lowering of the mortality among them is of 

 itself an increase of strength to the army and the country. Thus, 

 during the last five years, on the score of typhoid fever alone, 

 hygiene has saved to France the lives of twelve hundred and 

 sixty-five soldiers. In the seven years from 1880 to 1886 the an- 

 nual death-rate was 8'43 per thousand. In the seven following 

 years it sank to 6'63, and in 1894 to 6*20 per thousand. Meanwhile, 

 the mortality among people who have not the advantage of living 

 under enforced hygiene remains at eleven per thousand. 



Secondly, the compulsory military service, with all its disad- 

 vantages, gives the younger generation a strong training in prac- 

 tical hygiene. All able-bodied Frenchmen now learn, during a 

 term of years, the practice of bodily cleanliness and what consti- 

 tutes the health of habitation. These acquired habits they bring 

 back to civil life. 



PREHISTORIC ENGINEERING AT LAKE COPAIS. 



BY JOHN DENISON CHAMPLIN. 



~| TOMER, in his famous catalogue of the Greek and Trojan 

 J L forces in the second book of the Iliad, enumerates more 

 than twenty towns around Lake Copais which contributed col- 

 lectively to the Greek fleet eighty ships, in each of which 



"Were six score youths, Boeotia's noblest flower." 



The district comprising the Copaic basin was at the time of 

 the Trojan war, and probably long anterior even to that, one of 

 the richest and most populous parts of Greece. Its wealth of 

 myth would prove this, even if historic record were wanting. A 

 circle with a radius of twelve or fifteen miles drawn around Co- 

 pais will include more sites famous in romance and in history 

 than almost any other place of like extent on earth. The Boeo- 

 tian plain is nearly shut in by mountains the bare mention of 

 whose names calls up a vast panorama of heroic figures, with a 

 shadowy background of demigods and of gods reaching back 

 into cloudland. Prominent above all is double-headed, snow- 

 crowned Parnassus, with Delphi at its feet, its flanks scarred with 

 caves and glens down which still leap the waters of Castaly. 

 South of it, hiding the Corinthian gulf, stretches the range of 

 Helicon, with its lovely valleys and ravines, home of Apollo and 

 the Muses. Still farther south is Cithaeron, whose groves echoed 

 the revels of Bacchus and his train, and witnessed the punish- 

 ment meted to Acteon by the virgin goddess. Under its shadow 



VOL. XL VIII. 15 



