978 _ REPORT—1890., 
4. On Prehistoric Otter and Beaver Traps. By Rosert Munro, M.A., M.D. 
In this communication the author describes some curious wooden machines which 
have been discovered in various peat bogs in different parts of Europe, and of 
which hitherto no satisfactory explanation has been offered. His attention was 
first directed to the subject by the late Dr. Deschmann, curator of the Landes- 
museum at Laibach, who had in his custody two of these objects, one being in an 
excellent state of preservation. They were both found in the great Laibach moor, 
in the vicinity of the famous group of lake-dwellings then being investigated in 
that locality. The most perfect of the two was made of a solid piece of oak, 
measuring 32 inches long, 12 broad, and 4 deep. It tapered a little at both 
extremities, and contained a rectangular aperture in the middle, measuring 9 
inches long by 5 broad, which was closed by two movable valves worked by pivots 
projecting into corresponding holes in the framework. These valves were freely 
movable when pushed upwards, but this motion was arrested just a little short of 
the perpendicular by the slanting shape of their posterior edges, so that when left 
to themselves they always fell down, and so closed the aperture. 
These machines, not being actually found on the site of the lake-dwellings, 
though at the same depth in the peat, were not at first included among the relics 
from these habitations, and so they lay in the museum for several years as objects 
of a sut generis character, until some German anthropologists visited the locality 
and pointed out their similarity to a series of wooden objects that had been found 
in North Germany. One of the objects thus referred to, and the first discovered, 
is figured and described by Dr. Hildebrandt, of Tribsees, in the ‘ Zeitschrift fiir 
Ethnologie’ (‘ Verhand.’ for 1878), vol. v. p. 119, who conjectures that it had been 
used attached to a net for catching fish. 
In the following year, Professor F. Merkel, of Rostock, in reply to Dr. Hilde- 
brandt’s communication (77d. vol. vi. p. 180), figures and describes a similar object 
found in the moor of Samow, and then preserved in the museum of Rostock, 
which was considered by sportsmen to have been a trap for catching otters. A 
few years later (1877), Dr. Friedel announced the discovery of a third example, 
which had been found in a moor at Friedrichsbruca, near Flatow, in the province 
of West Prussia (¢bid. vol. ix. p. 162). All these objects were buried in the peat 
to a depth of 6 or7 feet. 
Profiting by the suggestions thus received, and considering the character of the 
fauna of the lake-dwellings at Laibach, which yielded an enormous number of the 
bones of the beaver (representing at least 140 individuals) but none of the otter, 
Dr. Deschmann and his assistant came to the conclusion that the Laibach machines 
were beaver-traps. 
Quite recently, Dr. Meschinelli, of the Geological Museum of the R. 
University of Naples, published a memoir on some prehistoric remains dis- 
covered at Fontega, a small valley which opens into Lake Fimon, near 
Vicenza, in North Italy (‘Atti della Soc. Veneto-Trent. di Sc. Nat.’ vol. 
xi.). Among the objects figured in this memoir is a wooden boat-shaped 
object, 28 inches in length, containing two central valves, which Dr. Munro at 
once recognised as analogous to the objects found at Laibach and in North 
Germany. Dr. Meschinelli states that two more were discovered in the course of 
his investigations, which, though less perfectly preserved, were, so far as he could 
judge, precisely similar to the one figured in his memoir. When Dr. Meschinelli 
wrote his memoir he was unaware of the discovery of similar objects elsewhere 
in Europe, and he was much puzzled to account for their use, conjecturing that 
they might have been models of boats. After the principal facts in regard to the 
previous discoveries were laid before him, he has published a second memoir 
(‘ Rend. della R. Accad. delle Sc. Fis. e Matemat. di Napoli,’ 1890), in which he 
criticises and rejects all the previous explanations, so far as applicable to the Fontega 
machines, but comes to the conclusion that they were used as traps for catching 
wild birds, such as water-fowl. 
What still further enhances the interest in this subject is the fact that, as 
early as 1859, a wooden implement which evidently comes under the same category 
was found in a bog in the townland of Coolnaman, County Derry, Ireland. 
