174 On the Ancient Lake Habitations of Switzerland. 



The next series represent the age of Bronze. Here orna- 

 ments and weapons, often of high artistic merit, are found, and the 

 other remains indicate the knowledge of useful arts, as spinning, 

 and the manufacture of a higher class of probably wheel-turned 

 pottery. This era is represented by the settlements of Meilen, 

 Bienne, Concise,* and many others. Lastly, at Auvernier, in 

 the Lake of Neuchatel, and at the Steinberg, in the Lake of 

 Bienne, a few weapons of iron have even been met with. 



The distance from the shore at which the piles were driven 

 appears to have been regulated by the nature of the bottom 

 of the lake and the depth of the water. Some few could evi- 

 dently have been reached only by a boat ; but most of them 

 appear to have been connected with the land by means of a 

 narrow gangway supported on piles, a portion at least of which 

 could be readily removed, so as to insure security from the^ 

 attacks of bears or wolves during the night, or as a means of 

 defending themselves against the hostile raids of neighbouring 

 and more powerful races. 



Many canoes have been discovered, associated with the 

 Swiss pile-works, each made of a single tree, and measuring- 

 forty to fifty feet in length, and three to four feet in width, the 

 interior hollowed out by stone hatchets, aided by fires. Similar 

 canoes are still used, both upon the rivers of Western Africa 

 and North and South America ; and one of my German friends 

 tells me he has frequently crossed both lakes and rivers in 

 Bavaria in such a boat, called an einbaum. Early British and 

 Irish canoes were likewise of the same pattern, according to 

 Professor Win. King, and were used in the latter countay so 

 lately as two centuries ago. 



Herodotus (lib. v., cap. 16) gives an account of a race 

 called Paeonians, inhabiting pile-dwellings (b.c. 520) in Lake 

 Prasias, in Thrace (now part of modern Roumelia) . 



Each cabin had a trap-door opening on to the lake, in 

 which fish was so abundant, that it was only necessary to lower 

 a basket by a cord into the water, and haul it up again, and it 

 was found to bo filled with fish. When their country was 

 invaded by the Persians, they retired to their impregnable lake 

 habitations with their horses and cattle, subsisting upon fish, 

 and so defied the invader. That horses would eat fish at all, 

 might at first seem incredible; but my late colleague, Mr. 

 Adam White (of the Zoological Department), has recorded, in 

 his Natural History of Animals (p. 28), that " both cows and 

 ponies in Shetland readily eat Bsh-heads in winter!" so that 

 Herodotus was probably eorrect in his statement. 



They made the first platform at the public expense; but 



* Meilen, on Lake Zurich, and Concise, on the Lalco of Ncuchatel, appear to 

 have hcen inhabited in both the Stone and Bronze periods. 



