740 APPENDIX, 



domesticated prehistoric pig, it is almost needless to say, are the 

 bones of small animals ; nor does the early age at which the great 

 majority of domestic swine were then as now slaughtered entirely 

 explain this fact away. 



As regards the sheep, Ovis aries, I have to say, firstly, that I think 

 the caution with which any identification of any ovine or caprine 

 hone from a prehistoric ' find ' is usually recorded, should be so 

 worded, or at least received, as to make us think it is at least as 

 likely to be a sheep's bone as a goat's. The reverse is ordinarily 

 taken as being implied. But anybody who will study the coloured 

 drawing given by Low (Hist. Nat. An. Dom. de I'Europe, pis. i, ii, 

 French ed.) as referred to by Riitimeyer (Fauna des Pfahlbauten, 

 p. 129) of the ' dun-faced,' ' flounder-tailed,' ' hrevicauda^ ' goat- 

 horned ' variety of the sheep still existing in the islands north of 

 the Pentland Firth, will see how diflficult it must be to decide the 

 question as to the absence or presence of the sheep at any particular 

 prehistoric period, unless an entire skull be available for deciding 

 the question. Nor is the variation which gives to the horns of 

 the sheep, usually considered the most distinctive portion in the 

 prehistoric skeletons left us, the shape of those of the goat, by 

 any means confined to the Orkney or Shetland sheep. The same 

 approach to the goat's character is noted of the horns of the Welsh 

 higher mountain breed (Low, Fr. ed. p. 20, Eng. ed. p. 65) of 

 sheep. Hence it is entirely unsafe to decide from the often frag- 

 mentary and detached horn-cores wdiich we obtain from neolithic 

 burials that the animal they belonged to was not a sheep. 



But, secondly, though a sheep may have the horn-cores usually 

 found in goats, a goat never has the horn-cores usually found in 

 sheep. But such may be found in prehistoric interments ^. 



^ Since wi-iting as above I have, thi-ovigh the kindness of Herreu Edmund von 

 Fellenberg and Grossrath Biirki in Bern, of Professor P. A. Porel of Lausanne, and of 

 Dr. Uhhnann at Miinchenbuchsee, had opportunities for examining the very rich 

 collections of animal bones from the various lake-dwellings which owe so much to 

 their protecting care. And I found that the caution which is necessary in dealing 

 with the scanty and often imperfect remains available to me from oui* prehistoric 

 graves is superfluous in face of their abundant and more complete specimens. The 

 goat is richly and unambiguously represented in the stone-age lake-dwellings, and 

 more abundantly indeed than the sheep in the early stone-age lake-dwellings of 

 Moosseedoi'f . It seems however to have lost this numerical preponderance towards 

 the end of the stone period, and to have become comparatively scarce in the bronze 

 age. And I find that M. Kinberg, Stockholm Internat. Congres Anth., p. 831, 

 tells us of Sweden that ' La Chevre Capra hirctis h. parait avoir ^te primitivement 

 plus rare que le mouton. EUe est rare du moins dans les sepultures de I'age de la 

 pierre de la Vestergotlande.' These facts are entirely in keeping with the sus- 



