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Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



relative age and their relation to history. There is no doubt that the re- 

 mains of those older settlements, where stone implements alone were used, 

 are of very great age, and of them we have no record and no history, ex- 

 cept what is deduced from their silent remains. In some of the latter set- 

 tlements, however, there appears undoubted relics of Roman origin, which 

 links them to the dawn of history and reveals them to us as the celtic 

 tribes of Helvetia described in Caesar's Gallic Wars. Numerous references 

 are to be found among ancient Greek and floman authors describing the 

 lake-dwelling nature of this people, and it is probable that part of their 

 progress in the art of metallurgy was derived from intercourse with the more 

 advanced Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians or Carthagenians, who traversed and 

 settled the regions bordering upon the Mediterranean Sea. 



The peculiar nature of building houses upon piles is not only manifested 

 in the instance referred to in some of the Swiss peasants of to-day, but it 

 also has an example in the city of Venice, founded and built upon piles by 

 the Venetian tribes of fishermen. This city, once the grandest in the 

 world, is fast falling to decay. The piles which support that grand struc- 

 ture, St. Mark's Cathedral, are gradually giving way and the floors of those 

 beautiful mosaics are sinking. • Yes, Venice is strangely built upon piles 

 imbedded in the mud of low islands and shallow seas, and is an ideal rep- 

 resentation of what the residence of the lake dwellers might have been 

 expected to develop into in modern times under the influence of art, afflu- 

 ence and power combined with the advances of civilization. 



I will detain you only for a summary of these points. These people 

 were of Asiatic origin, a part of the first great wave of Aryan people, viz. : 

 the Celtic. They had advanced beyond the hunter period before leaving 

 Asia, and had become a nomadic pastoral people with their herds of domes- 

 ticated animals ; reaching Switzerland, into which they were crowded by 

 later waves, they found some difficulty in this nomadic, pastoral life from 

 the rugged nature of the country. The lakes abounded in fish, while their 

 level shores were fertile. Under these influences they could but adapt 

 themselves to circumstances, and so they began to be an agricultural people, 

 retaining their hunting and fishing proclivities and also their stock. Cir- 

 cumstances, which I have before described, eventually led to their dwel- 

 ling in lakes. We have also in these people the link which connects the 

 people who used stone relics with the history of the Romans, and which are 

 thus connected with modern times, as well as examples of the introduction 

 of copper and bronze. Recent discoveries in the lakes and bogs of Scot- 

 land and Ireland would seem to indicate that the celtic inhabitants of those 

 countries had similar proclivities. Yet, with this important difference, 



