130 DESCRIPTION OF THE REMAINS AT WAUWYL. 



found In the old beds of many small lakes, and is frequently 

 mentioned by the Swiss archaeologists under the name of 

 " weissgrund." It must not, however, be confounded with 

 the " blancfond " of the larger lakes. The piles go through 

 the peat and the " weissgrund " into the solid ground below. 

 It is not easy to obtain them whole, because the lower por- 

 tions are much altered by time, and so thoroughly saturated by 

 water, that they are quite soft. Col. Suter, however, extracted 

 two of them; one was 14ft. Gin. in length, of which 4ft. was in 

 the peat, and the remaining 10ft. Gin. in the sand beneath ; the 

 other was only 8ft. Gin. long, 4ft. of which was in the peat, 

 the other 4ft. Gin. in the solid ground. The piles vary from 

 three to five inches in diameter, and are always round, never 

 having been squared. The lower part is very badly cut, so 

 that it is difficult to understand how they can have been 

 forced to so great a depth into the ground. 



In most of the Pfahlbauten the piles are scattered, 

 more or less irregularly, over the whole extent of the 

 settlement ; at Wauwyl this is not the case, but they en- 

 close, as it were, four quadrangular areas, the interiors of 

 which are occupied by several platforms one over the other, 

 the interstices being filled up by branches, leaves, and peat. 

 The objects of antiquity are not scattered throughout the 

 peat, but lie either on the layer of broken shells, which 

 formed the then bottom of the lake, or in the lower part of 

 the peat. It is therefore evident that almost the whole, if not 

 the whole, of the peat has grown since the time at which this 

 interesting ruin was inhabited. The upper part had, how- 

 ever, been removed before our arrival, so that the " cultur- 

 chicht," the layer containing the objects of antiquity, was ex- 

 posed ready for examination in the manner already described. 



Some of the piles still stand two or three feet above the 

 level of the peat, but the greater number are broken off 

 lower down. "We stood on one of the upper platforms, 



