150 Tlie Lake-Dwellers of Switzerland. 



rearranged and translated them, with, additions and alterations 

 made by Dr. Keller, or with his approval, so as to make the 

 book an invaluable treasury of facts known up to the present 

 time. The illustrations are of a very high order of merit, and 

 occupy no less than ninety- six plates, comprehending an 

 amazing variety of objects, elucidating the mode of life and 

 state of art amongst a most interesting set of men during the 

 many generations that they adopted a sort of amphibious life. 



To settle with tolerable approximation to accuracy the 

 earliest period illustrated by the relics of the lake-dwellers is a 

 difficult task for the geologist, but to the antiquarian belong 

 the later periods in which the influence of Roman civilization 

 is distinctly seen. That in Switzerland, in Ireland, and in 

 various parts of the earth, tribes should have lived surrounded 

 by water on artificial islands, is not in itself to be wondered at. 

 Fishing must have been a source of subsistence almost as 

 universal as the water in which the aquatic vertebrates dwell. 

 Hence the vicinity of rivers, lakes, and seas must have been 

 favourable to the multiplication of the human race, and to their 

 aggregation into communities. Nor are we astonished that 

 the water should be turned into a means of defence. An 

 island, whether natural or artificial, is, by its position, more- or 

 less protected from the attacks which rude savages can carry 

 on ; and a tribe of people living in a village sustained upon 

 piles, only accessible from the mainland by a single causeway, 

 or rude bridge, supplied with fish from the adjacent water, 

 and never lacking the fluid most essential for quenching thirst, 

 might be regarded as in a condition of considerable security 

 and comfort. 



The researches which Dr. Lee has now rendered accessible 

 to English readers, seem to show that the custom of living on 

 pile-supported villages in lakes, was by no means confined to 

 a peculiar race distinct from the inhabitants of the adjacent 

 land, nor limited to such times of barbarism as might have 

 been supposed. The earliest lake-dwellers must, if we consider 

 them to have been the parents and progenitors of the later 

 lake -dwellers, have already started on the road to civilization. 

 Their implements may have been rude, their wants few, and 

 their means of supplying them small; but they must have 

 been in a very different state from those races of savages which 

 remain stationary or die out, as circumstances change. In the 

 earliest lake-dwelling period, rude huts, resting on piles, and 

 made in a rough fashion, something like the "wattle and dab" 

 construction of Australian settlers at the present day, with clay 

 floors, and roofs of bark, straw, and rushes, seem to have 

 been aggregated into villages of considerable size. Fishing 

 nets, and hooks made of boars' tusks, have been found in some 



