ARTIFICIAL, SHELL-DEPOSITS. 37 



in the refuse ; but they appear in small number, and have added but little 

 to the bulk of the shell-heaps. In regard to the oyster, it is worthy of remark 

 that this bivalve has disappeared from the neighborhood of the kitchen- 

 middens, being now confined to a few localities on the Cattegat. Yet even there 

 it never attains the large size characterizing the oysters of the old shell-beds. 

 The cockles and periwinkles, too, though still living in the same waters, are 

 much smaller than those of ancient times. These changes have been attributed 

 to a diminution of the saline matter in the water of the Baltic Sea. 



The crustaceans are represented in the kitchen-middens by a few fragments 

 of crabs. 



Fish-remains are quite abundant, especially those of the herring (Clupea 

 harengus, Lin.); but bones of the dorse (Gradus callarias, Lin.), dab (Pleuronectes 

 limanda, Lin.), and eel (Murcena anguilla, Lin.) are also quite common. 



Nothing definite is known concerning the methods employed by the coast- 

 dwellers for obtaining their prey from the sea, no implements having been 

 discovered that afford any clue. The nature of their captures, however, indicates 

 that they had to venture upon the open sea, in order to make them ; and they 

 probably availed themselves of small boats, perhaps formed of trunks of trees, 

 hollowed by means of fire. That they used nets appears highly probable, though 

 direct indications of that practice, in the shape of prepared net-sinkers, have not 

 been found. 



LAKE-DWELLINGS. 



Character. The facts hitherto considered in these pages bear rather indis- 

 tinctly upon prehistoric fishing in Europe. Though we know well enough that 

 the cave-men and the people who left the kitchen-middens practised fishing, we 

 have scarcely any positive knowledge concerning the methods employed by them 

 in their piscatorial pursuits, and must leave it in a great measure to imagination 

 to supply that want. Far more precise information concerning fishing in ancient 

 times was obtained in the course of the examinations of pile-buildings in the 

 lakes of Switzerland and other countries of Europe. The existence of the 

 remains of these lacustrine settlements became known in the winter of 1854, 

 when the water in the Swiss lakes had sunk much below its ordinary level, laying 

 bare large tracts of land along their shores. A rare chance was thus afforded to 

 the people of the neighborhood for adding to their lands by building walls near 

 the water's edge as a means for cutting off denuded areas. So it happened at 

 Meilen, on the Lake of Zurich, where, during the progress of such opei'ations, 

 pieces of a rude kind of pottery, articles of stone, bone, and horn, hard-shelled 

 fruits and other vegetable remains, and rows of decayed wooden piles were 

 discovered in the mud of the lake. The late Dr. Ferdinand Keller, Pi*esident 



