/. Lubbock on the Ancient Lake Habitations of Switzerland. 185 



than thirty pieces of Gaulish and Massaliot money anterior to our 

 era, enable us to refer this battle field to the Koman era. 



After this period we find no more evidences of Lake habita- 

 tions on a larger scale. Here and there indeed a few fishermen 

 may have lingered on the half destroyed platforms, but the wants 

 and habits of the people had changed, and the age of Pileworks 

 was at an end. 



"We have, however, traced them through the Stone and Bronze 

 down to the beginning of the Iron period. We have seen evi- 

 dences of a gradual progress in civilization, and improvement 

 in the arts, an increase in the domestic animals, and proofs at 

 last of the existence of an extended commerce. We found the 



try inhabited only by rude savages and ' 

 seat of a powerful nation. Changes so important as these are 

 not etfected in a day ; the progress of the human mind is but 

 slow ; and the gradual additions to human knowledge and power 

 like the rings in trees, enable us to form some idea how distant 

 must be the date of their commencement. So varied however 

 are the conditions of the human mind, so much are all nations 

 affected by the influence of others, that when we attempt to ex- 



^ of the pre 



t the result is only to show 



I but ( 



enabling us to define any well marked points of time. Thus m 

 iJeamark we found three periods of arborescent vegetation, cor- 

 responding to the three epochs of human development, and we 

 know that the extermination of one species of forest tree and its 

 replacement by another is not the work of a day. ilie bwiss 

 archjeologists, however, have attempted to make an estimate 

 somewhat more definite than this. ^ ■ . n • . .i. 



The torrent of the Tini^re* at the point where it falls into the 

 ^ake of Geneva, near ViUeneuve, has gradually built up a cone 

 «f gravel and alluvium. In the formation of the railway this 

 cone has been bisected for a length of one thousand feet, and to 

 \<iepth in the central part, of about thirty-two feet six inches 

 above the level of the rails. The section of the cone thus OD- 

 tamed shows a very regular structure, which proves that its tor- 

 nation was gradual. I? is composed of the same J^^^^^^Jf l\(f "^^ 

 ?^avel, and Larger blocks) as are even now brought down by the 

 stream. The detritus does indeed differ slightly from year to 

 yf^, but in the long run the differences compensate tor one an- 

 "^^her, so that when considering long periods and the structure 

 '^^;ne whole mass, the influences of these temporary sanations 

 ^^ arise from meteorological causes, altogether disappear, and 



