126 ATTEMPT TO MAKE A CENSUS. 



and M. Troyon has made an attempt to do so. The settle- 

 ment at Morges, which is one of the largest in the Lake 

 of Geneva, is 1200 feet long and 150 broad, giving a 

 surface of 180,000 square feet. Allowing the huts to have 

 been fifteen feet in diameter, and supposing that they oc- 

 cupied half the surface, leaving the rest for gangways, he 

 estimates the number of cabins at 311 ; and supposing again 

 that, on an average, each was inhabited by four persons, he 

 obtains for the whole a population of 1244. Starting from 

 the same data, he assumes for the Lake of Neufchatel a 

 population of about 5000. Sixty- eight villages, belonging 

 to the Bronze age, are supposed to have contained 42,500 

 persons ; while for the preceding epoch, by the same process 

 of reasoning, he estimates the population at 31,875. 



So far as these calculations rest on the fragments of the clay 

 walls, they must be regarded as altogether unsatisfactory, since 

 Dr. Keller informs us that the largest pieces yet discovered 

 are only a foot in their greatest diameter. There is also good 

 reason to believe that the huts were not circular, but rectangu- 

 lar. Nor am I inclined to attribute much value to the esti- 

 mates of population based on the extent of the platforms. M. 

 Troyon himself admits that his "chiffres sont peut-etre un peu 

 Sieve's, en e*gard aux habitations sur terre ferme, dont il ne 

 peut etre question dans ce calcul, et vu qu'on est encore bien 

 loin de connaitre tous les points des lacs qui ont ete occupes," 

 and, indeed, in the three years which have elapsed since his 

 book was written, the number of Lake-villages discovered has 

 been doubled. Moreover, M. Troyon assumes that the Lake- 

 villages of the Bronze age were contemporaneous, and that 

 the same was the case with those belonging to the Stone 

 age. This also I should be disposed to question ; both these 

 periods, but especially the Stone age, in all probability ex- 

 tended over a long series of years, and though in these 

 matters it is of course necessary to speak with much caution, 



