XXXIX. 

 JADE TOOLS IN SWITZERLAND. 



[The Geneva Correspondent of the 'Times' newspaper, Dec. 17, 1879, having re- 

 ferred to the ' find * of a jade instrument in the bed of the Rhone in the course of 

 excavations then being conducted, and having raised the question of the region from 

 which the mineral Jade had been derived, a correspondence extending over some weeks 

 took place, in which Professor Max Miiller, Mr. Hodder M. Westropp, Dr. Rolleston, 

 Professor Story-Maskelyne, Major Raverty, and A. B. M. took part. Dr. Rolleston's 

 letters were principally directed to show that the source of jade is Oriental, and in this 

 he was supported by Professor Story-Maskelyne. — Editor.] 



LETTER 1. 



Dec. 25, 1879. 



Your correspondent Mr. H. M. Westropp calls the supposition 

 that the jade tools found in the Swiss lake-dwellings came from 

 the East 'a wild hypothesis.' Now, we must judge of the diffi- 

 culties of the past by what we can see of the possibilities of the 

 present, and I make bold to say that some thousands of men who 

 read those words this morning must have had in their pockets 

 implements which had travelled with the single individuals carry- 

 ing them, in their single lifetimes, over much greater distances 

 than this ' wild hypothesis ' supposes the westward migrating 

 Stone- Age men to have traversed in many generations. Hence 

 I submit there is no a priori improbability attaching to the view 

 in question. 



This view is^ indeed, one of the best- established facts which 

 recent prehistoric research has brought to light. 



So long ago as 1865, M. Eellenberg, /»^re, analysed four imple- 

 ments of nephrite from Meilen and Concise, and one of jadeite from 

 Mooseedorff. This nephrite was found to have precisely the same 

 chemical composition as the well-known New Zealand nephrite, 

 analysed by Scherer ; and the jadeite to be similarly identical with 

 the mineral known under that name from China, and analysed by 



