HIS GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS. 125 



platforms for huts, who wove cloth, domesticated 

 animals, and had some simple forms of agriculture, 

 were by no means in the earliest stages of savage life ; 

 and though they may have passed through the suc- 

 cessive stages of using stone, bronze, and iron imple 

 ments, still, the fact of their settling in communities 

 and erecting permanent dwellings does not entitle 

 them to be regarded as the earliest inhabitants of the 

 district.* Man's beginnings in every country are 

 rude, scanty, and easUy effaced. Few in number as 

 compared with other animals, wandering hither and 

 thither as the chance of food impels, sheltering in 



* These lake-dwellings, known as PfaKOtauten or " pile-dwellings " 

 in Switzerland, and as Cramwgttes in Ireland and Scotland, have 

 recently received mncli attention from archaeologists. In the older 

 Pfahlbauten of Switzerland the implements are chiefly of stone, and 

 associated with the castaway bones of the deer, hoar, and wild ox ; 

 in those of intermediate age bronze implements prevail, associated with 

 the hones of the domestic ox, pig, and goat ; while in the more 

 recent, iron swords and spears have been found, accompanied by 

 carbonised grains of wheat and barley, and with fragments of rude 

 textures woven of flax and straw. The more recent seem to have 

 been anterior to the great Roman invasion of Northern Europe ; the 

 more ancient may be many thousands of years older than that 

 event ; but on the whole they cannot be said to afford satisfactory 

 evidence of the high antiquity which has been assigned to them by 

 some continental inquirers. For a compendious and instructive 

 account of these pre-historic habitations the reader may refer to Dr. 

 Keller's La!ce Dwellings of Switzerland, translated by Mr. Lee 

 in 1866. 



