MOLLUSCA OF LOWER CANADA. til 



tween tertiary fossils and their living analogues. -A rob geologists 

 tell us there are three epochs in man's history ; the first, and 

 oldest, of stone, the second of bronze, the third of iron. The 

 discovery of flint implements in European drifts, together with 

 the evidences afforded by the Pfahlbauten (pile-works) or Like 

 habitations, in Switzerland, have taught us that man was contem- 

 porary with many extinct mammals, that were once thought to 

 date back beyond the historic period. 



As yet we have no definite proof that man existed prior to 

 the deposition of the older marine deposits of the post-pliocene 

 period, represented in this country by the Leda clay and the 

 Saxicava sand. In the stone period we have evidence of two 

 races of mankind, which in all probability were separated from 

 each other by a considerable space of time. Of the primitive 

 race who made the so-called flint hatchets, spear heads, etc*, 

 which have been collected in such numbers in the valley of the 

 Sornme, we know but little positively. Contemporary with them 

 were Euelephas primigenius, Bison priscus, Hippopotamus major, 

 Rhinoceros leptorhinus, and R. tichorinus (?), the cave bear — a spe- 

 cies said by Owen to exceed in size the grizzly bear of the Rocky 

 Mountains — and the fossil hyaena. The fresh-water shells asso- 

 ciated with these, with one exception, are of species still living in 

 France. The solitary exception is the well known Corbicula flu- 

 minalis, which now inhabits the Alexandrian canal. 



Whether the implements of this race were made for warlike or 

 for agricultural purposes is not positively known. But respecting 

 the men of the second period in the stone age, the Celts, we have 

 much fuller knowledge. So many of their settlements have been 

 discovered in Switzerland that it would be tedious to particularize 

 all of them. For instance, on the lake of Geneva, twenty-four 

 such colonies have been found ; on lake Neufchatel twenty-six, 

 and on lake Bienne eleven. The dwellers in these lake habitations 

 belonged however to the bronze epoch, as well as to the later of 

 the two stone periods. Some of these colonies must have been large, 

 judging from the size of the piles and the numbers of the huts. 

 Thus in one of the settlements on lake Neufchatel, remains of 

 311 cabins of large size have been found, and allowing four inha- 

 bitants to each hut, we should have an aggregate of 1244 indivi- 

 duals. From similar data it has been calculated that in Switzer- 

 land alone, sixty-eightvillages of the bronze period contained nearly 

 43,000 persons ; and in the older or stone period the settlements 

 discovered would accommodate nearly 32,000. 



