108 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



the latter case it is difficult to understand the prolongation of the bottom and 

 sides for eight inches, or the additional thickness of the wood just at this end 

 from about the fifth rib down to the part cut off. One would almost have thought 

 that this was the middle of the canoe.* 



" The canoe, in its present state, is a trifle more than nineteen English feet 

 long, from the extreme point of the conical end to the part cut off. The circum- 

 ference is somewhat round, so that the sides project beyond the bottom and slope 

 very gradually downwards ; thus the boat has somewhat the shape of a trough. 

 It is strengthened at the bottom by five cross-ribs, which rise nearly two and a 

 half inches from the bottom, but do not reach the sides. There is a peculiar 

 beak-shaped projection in the massive conical bow, which stretches about eight in- 

 ches into the hollow of the canoe and divides the extreme end into two parts. The 

 sides are very thin at the edge, and this is also the case with the bottom, except 

 near the part where it is cut off, where it is twice as thick as elsewhere. It was 

 unfortunately impossible to preserve this very perishable canoe, as it was of 

 poplar, and fell to pieces as soon as it was exposed. 



" If we ask the age of this interesting boat, it will itself return the answer ; 

 for in fact we found lying on the bottom in the middle of the canoe, a quantity 

 of pieces of pottery belonging to three different earthenware vessels. This 

 pottery is of half-baked clay in two instances, mixed with a quantity of quartzose 

 sand. One has the edge ornamented with impressions similar to those common 

 at Nidau-Steinberg and Mo'ringen. One piece belonged to a shining black thin 

 vessel, and very decidedly indicates the bronze age, and to this age we may con- 

 sider the canoe to belong. It may probably have hailed from Nidau-Steinberg."-)- 



FIG. 163. Boat. Mercurago. 



A boat from the pile-work in the turbary of Mercurago (see page 68 of this 

 publication) is described and figured by Professor Gastaldi.J His illustration, 

 here given as Fig. 163, shows the boat in a fragmentary state, only one meter 

 and ninety centimeters of its length remaining ; it is about a meter wide, and 

 thirty centimeters in depth. The station in question, it will be remembered, is 



* This appears plausible enough. But a dug-out, twenty-two feet long, with a stern-piece placed exactly as 

 in the Swiss boat, was found in the lake-dwelling at Buston, near Kilmaurs, Scotland. It is described and repre- 

 sented in Dr. Robert Munro's "Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings or Crannogs " (Edinburgh, 1882; p. 206, etc.). 

 He mentions in his work several Scottish canoes, but does not seem to assign to them any great antiquity. 



t Keller: Lake Dwellings; Vol. I, p. 224, etc. 

 J Gastaldi : Lake Habitations ; p. 102, Fig. 30. 



