CH. xxxix. LAKE-DWELLINGS. 



417 



near Torquay, but very little notice had been taken of this 

 discovery. Now, however, they were thoroughly studied, 

 and they showed clearly that men who made rough flint 

 tools (such as are still made by savages in many parts of the 

 world) must have lived in England, together with a bear, 

 an elephant, a lion, and a hyaena, all of species v/hich have 

 now ceased to exist. 



Discovery of the Swiss Lake-dwellings, 1853.— Again, 

 in Switzerland, most curious discoveries have been made, 

 giving us proofs of three distinct periods in the life of man- 

 kind. In the year 1853, when the Swiss lakes were very 

 low in consequence of a long drought, wooden piles were 

 observed to rise above the water; and when these were 

 examined by the Swiss antiquarians it was found that they 

 were foundations of wooden villages, which had been built 

 by the inhabitants of Switzerland in past ages. They stood 

 some way out in the lake, and must have been joined to 

 the shore by wooden bridges which the villagers could lift 

 up when enemies came to attack them, and thus become 

 protected by the water surrounding them. Habitations of 

 this kind are built in the present day by the natives of Papua 

 or New Guinea. 



Down below the piles in the mud of the Swiss lakes a 

 great number of tools, cooking utensils, bones of animals, and 

 even burnt bread and corn, were found ; and the remarkable 

 thing was, that the ditferent kinds of tools showed that the 

 villages did not all belong to one age. In a few, on the 

 lakes of Bienne and Neuchatel, iron tools were buried, show- 

 ing that when th^se villages were inhabited men knew how 

 to melt iron out of the rocks and make it into tools. These 

 villages must have been about the time of the Romans. 



In others, however, only bronze tools were found, and 



