Auckland Institute. 653 



had acquired a knowledge of weaving, flax being cultivated and woven into 

 tissues ; agriculture had made a start, and such animals as the ox, sheep, 

 goat, pig and dog were domesticated. 



Weaving. — The piece of cloth we have here is apparently made of flax, 

 the warp and the woof being wonderfully regular, and indicating a great 

 advance in civilization. Hemp does not appear to have been known. 



Grain. — One of the small bottles in the collection contains some car- 

 bonized cereal, whether wheat or barley I cannot say. Three varieties of 

 wheat, two kinds of barley, and two of millet, were cultivated, but how the 

 ground was prepared I cannot discover, no acknowledged agricultural im- 

 plements having been found as yet. It is a fact that they made bread, 

 apparently however without leaven. The specimens that have been found 

 very closely resemble badly-made " damper." Sometimes they appear to 

 have roasted the grains, pounded them between stones and stored them 

 away in earthenware vessels made pointed at the bottom, so that they could 

 easily stand upright in the ground. Carbonized apples have also been 

 found. There are no traces of the grape ; but what are supposed to be 

 stones of the wild plum, seeds of the raspberry and blackberry, and sheUs 

 of the hazel nut and beech nut, occur pretty frequently, while in one settle- 

 ment peas have been discovered. 



Animals. — Professor Eiitimeyer, who has paid great attention to the fauna 

 of this period, tells us that the total number of species amounts to 70, and 

 that at least 6 of these, the dog, horse, pig, goat, sheep, and two varieties of 

 oxen, were domesticated. He says, also, that the bones very seldom occur in 

 a natural condition, those of domestic and wild animals are mixed together, 

 the marks of knives are upon many, and almost all have been broken, 

 evidently for their marrow. The stag and the ox seem to have been 

 specially numerous, the stag in the older settlements exceeding the ox in 

 the number of specimens, while in the more modern ones the converse is 

 true. The hog appears to come next in order of abundance, followed by 

 the goat and the sheep, which latter seems to have increased very rapidly. 

 The dog is found less frequently than the fox. Eemains of the bear, the 

 wolf, the bison, and the elk have also been found. The stag and the boar 

 of those times seem to have been much larger than they are now, the fox 

 smaller, and the sheep about the same size as those now grazing on the 

 mountain sides in Wales and Shetland. People were free from the presence 

 of the common mouse and the house-rat, and as puss was not therefore re- 

 quired, so she did not appear. Professor Eiitimeyer found a single bone of 

 the common fowl, but this he assigns to a later period. 



I have not been able to obtain any reliable information as to the race of 

 men that inhabited these lake dwellings. 

 62 



