1865.] Kett on Prehistoric Records. 249 



if the hair they were intended to confine was often in a dishevelled 

 condition. 



It is hard to imagine why people should have chosen such local- 

 ities as these lakes for their habitations. No doubt, safety, first from 

 wild animals, and afterwards from their fellow-men, was one of the 

 primary reasons. Herodotus mentions that the Thracians, to whom 

 we referred above, remained safe from the attacks of the entire Per- 

 sian army. These men, however, dwelt far out into their lake. The 

 Swiss, on the other hand, seem never to have gone farther than three 

 hundred feet from the land, whilst their general distance was about 

 one hundred. This, however, would probably afford sufficient protec- 

 tion against flint-headed arrows or sling stones, though we could hardly 

 suppose it would have availed much against the fire-bearing arrows 

 such as the Persians could have used. In Syria certain Christians are 

 said to have escaped from the Mahomedans by living in such dwell- 

 ings. Thus these platforms have been made use of down to late 

 and historic times, and even in Switzerland fishing-huts constructed on 

 this principle, according to M. Keller, existed on the Limmat, near 

 Zurich, as late as the last century. 



It is one of the customs of the day to compare the growth of 

 nations to the growth of the individual, to speak of the education of 

 a race as we should of the education of a child, and to talk of man- 

 kind as a body passing through all the stages that each member of the 

 whole human family travels over. We all know how children delight 

 in water, how boating, swimming, and fishing form some of the especial 

 amusements of young people ; may it not be that in the childhood of 

 nations, when the earth was young, and tribes wandered about in the 

 wantonness and playfulness, and with not a little of petulant quarrel- 

 someness, of children, similar likings and tastes led these young 

 nations to choose a dwelling in the midst of the waters ? 



In order that an idea may be formed of the numbers of these 

 Pfahlbauten, a list is subjoined of the principal lakes in Switzerland, 

 in which they have been found, with the numbers attached. It will 

 be seen that the surface of the country inhabited by the people of this 

 time lay in the richer, more fertile, and less rugged part of Switzer- 

 land, in a line stretching across from north-east to south-west, and 

 lying to the north and west of the Bernese Oberland. In Lake Con- 

 stance have been found 16 (all of the Stone Period only). Wangen 1 

 (S*), Lake Pfaffikon 2 (S, viz. at Eobenhausen and Wauwyl), Lake 

 Zurich 1 (B and S, at Meilen), Lake Sempach 1 (B), Lake Inkwyl 1 f 

 (S), Lake Luissel 1 (B), Lake Moosseedorf 2 J (S), Lake Bienne 7 

 (S) and 11 (B), Lake Morat 1 (B), Lake Neuchatel 26 (B and S), 

 Lake Geneva 24 (B and S), Lake Annecy, in Savoy 1 (B), and Miss- 

 baumen 1 (S). The inhabitants of the Bronze Period migrated rather 

 farther south than their predecessors in the Stone Age, whilst the 

 latter alone dwelt as far north as Constance and Wangen. 



Another style of habitation, also a species of lake-dwelling almost 



* (S) represents the Stone Period, (B) the Bronze. 



t A league south of Wangern, near Soleure. J Near Hofwyl. 



