468 Reviews — Dr. Munro's Lake-Dwellings. 



that name ; and being possessed of more worldly gear than the 

 earlier Cave-Dwellers, and, though living in communities, were yet 

 a peaceful and less warlike race ; they had invented a system of 

 fortified habitations, raised above the level of the water, by means 

 of piles driven into the bed of the river or lake, bearing a platform 

 of horizontal timbers upon their tops, on which the dwellings were 

 placed. These lacustrine habitations were sufficiently far from the 

 shore to protect them from enemies, and yet near enough to be 

 approached by a narrow briS'ge which could easily be removed or 

 destroyed in case of a hostile attack from the land. 



The relics of these dwellings first attracted attention at Ober- 

 Meilen, on the east shore of Lake Zurich, during the winter of 

 1853-54:, when, owing to the extreme lowness of the water of the 

 lake, the heads of numerous wooden piles were exposed, around 

 which were portions of Stag's antlers, stone hatchets and other 

 implements which excited some curiosity. Other finds followed 

 and led to the subject being taken up by Dr, Ferdinand Keller, 

 President of the Antiquarian Association at Zurich, to whom the 

 world is indebted for making known one of the most remarkable 

 archasological discoveries of this century, — a discovery which in its 

 consequential results is unique for the variety and wealth of mate- 

 rials with which it has illustrated that singular but long unknown 

 and forgotten phase of prehistoric civilization in Europe, which 

 found its outcome in the habit of constructing dwellings in lakes, 

 marshes, etc. 



Dr. Keller's researches were most extensive and were made known 

 in a series of exhaustive reports sufficient to fill many volumes. 

 They were first translated and the plates redrawn and published in 

 English by Mr. John Edward Lee, F.S.A., in 1866; but, in ten years, 

 Keller's continued researches in Switzerland had so grown, that, to 

 keep pace with them, a second edition was required extending to 

 two large volumes. 



"Since then, however (1878), the results of lacustrine researches 

 have been greater and more important than during any previous 

 corresponding period. The ' Correction des Eaux du Jura,' together 

 with various harbour alterations in the lakes of Ziirich, Geneva, 

 etc., have been the means of enormously increasing the lacustrine 

 collections of Switzerland, In North Italy not only have new 

 and remarkably interesting lacustrine stations been discovered and 

 exhaustively investigated, as Lagozza and Polada, but the researches 

 in the terremare have been such as to entirely alter the previous 

 opinions held in regard to them. Nor has the progress in this field 

 of research in many other countries in Europe been scarcely less 

 important : in proof of which I have only to mention the additions 

 made to the Scottish and Irish crannogs ; the curious fascine-struc- 

 tures brought to light, in Holderness, Yorkshire, the novel revela- 

 tions extracted from the terp-vaonnds in Holland, and other low- 

 lying districts on the coast of the German Ocean ; the greatly 

 extended and more accurate details of lacustrine structures in North 

 Germany ; the discovery in Hungary of prehistoric mounds analogous 



