REMAINS OF A ROUGH BASKET. 301 



only relate to stems, and their application to the case of branches 

 is not directly admissible. 



"The large scales of bark with a lighter- coloured surface 

 which occur, especially upon one of the specimens examined, do 

 not belong anatomically to the Coniferous wood of Switzerland, 

 although externally they appear to have grown over with it. 

 These scales are the remains of some bast-bearing dicotyledon- 

 ous bark which was perhaps employed for uniting the individual 

 rods ; at least the scales in question lie in such a manner upon 

 the wood that their longitudinal direction stands at right angles 

 to the direction of the woody cells." 



Prof. Rutimeyer regards speculation as superfluous relating 

 to the mode of employment of these rods. It seems most pro- 

 bable that the remains of some rough basket -like structures are 

 here preserved. 



A past period of time is geologically exactly defined by the 

 interglacial coal-bed, which contains the remains of the species 

 of animals, chiefly extinct, already mentioned; and from the 

 manner in which the wooden rods have been imbedded in the 

 surrounding material, from the nature of the mechanical and 

 chemical alterations which have taken place since the imbedding, 

 and from the still perceptible mode of the rods having been pre- 

 pared, certain proofs of human action are exhibited belonging to 

 an immensely remote epoch. 



The Professor does not discuss the epoch, to be estimated by 

 geological time, in which these manufactured articles became 

 associated with the process of the metamorphosis of their sur- 

 roundings. For Switzerland, and probably also for a wider 

 region, the rods may for the present be regarded as the oldest 

 trace of Man. If, indeed, it is probable that discoveries such 

 as those in the pits of Veyrier and Thayingen and at Schussen- 

 ried demonstrate the existence of Man in close relation to the 

 glacial period, even in the neighbourhood of so vast a source of 

 glaciers as the Alps, we have here not only the evidence of the 

 covering of a human dwelling-place by a deposit which was 

 formerly considered to have been the work of the whole glacial 

 period, but two additional new standards are offered for the 

 calculation of the indigenous presence of Man the transfor- 

 mation of human workmanship into lignite, and the contempo- 



