SIR CHARLES LYELL. 267 



circular houses. At Wangen, near Stein, on Lake 

 Constance, it is believed forty thousand piles were 

 used. Some five thousand objects have been found, 

 comprising flax, not woven, but plaited ; carbonized 

 wheat, and the bones of the dog, ox, sheep, and 

 goat. The arrow-heads, hatchets, and the like, 

 belong to the stone age, which geologists place, 

 at the least, seven thousand years ago. At Zurich 

 one human skull was found belonging to this early 

 stone age. No traveller should pass through 

 Zurich without seeing these memorials of a 

 people who lived in the dawn of civilization, when 

 the world was being made ready for the more 

 perfect man. 



Lyell had studied also the Danish " kitchen- 

 middens," familiar to those who have been care- 

 fully over the museums at Copenhagen. These 

 shell-mounds, the refuse heaps of this ancient race, 

 are sometimes one thousand feet long and two hun- 

 dred wide. As far back as the time of the Romans 

 the Danish isles were covered with magnificent 

 beech forests. In the bronze age there were no 

 beech trees, but oaks. In the stone age the Scotch 

 fir prevailed, and thousands of years must have 

 elapsed while these giant forests succeeded each 

 other. 



The delta and alluvial plain of the Mississippi 

 Lyell found to consist of sediment covering an 

 area of thirty thousand square miles, several hun- 

 dred feet deep. Taking the amount deposited 

 annually, it would require from fifty to one 



