104 Vestiges of the Earliest Inhabitants of Wiltshire. 



westwards, 1 considerably earlier, the last remnants of the tribe I 

 followed in the track of the first migrants about B.C. 650 : and it I 

 seems that they gradually advanced onwards through the central 

 and western countries of Europe, 2 finding those vast districts either I 



1 Niebuhr is undoubtedly right, when he says " all the wandering tribes which I 

 have successively occupied Scythia, when overpowered by new swarms from the I 

 East, have retired to the open country to the West, and towards the Danube : 

 there is every reason to believe that the mass of the Cimmerian nation was driven 

 westwards." [Scythia, p. 50, E.T.] The Cimmerians who fled eastwards must I 

 have been a mere section, not the great body of the nation. [Rawlinson Herod : | 

 vol. iii., 11. See also in the same vol. pp. 183 — 190. Appendix to Book iv., 

 Essay i., " On the Cimmerians of Herodotus, and the migrations of the Cymric 

 Race." 



Lingard's History of England, vol. i., p. 8. 



2 The very interesting discovery of late years of the remains of habitations, 

 supported on piles, on the lakes of Central Europe, particularly those of Switzer- I 

 land, and proved to be of very high antiquity, from the rude and coarse pottery 

 and the implements of stone and bone accompanying them, has led to much 

 speculation as to the race which founded them ; but antiquaries are agreed that 

 they are among the most primitive remains in Europe, and may probably be 

 attributed to the pre-Celtic population which occupied the lakes for security at 

 the time when the Celts began to press upon them. [Compare Herodotus' 

 account of the inhabitants of lake Prasias book v., chap. 16, and see Rawlinson' s 

 note in loco, vol. iii. p. 226, 544. Also M. Troyons " Habitations lacustres," 

 and his letter to M. Pictet, in the Bibliotheque universelle de Geneve, Mai, 

 1857, and an elaborate article in the Mittheilungen der Antiquarischen Gesell- 

 schaft in Zurich for 1854, by Dr. Ferdinand Keller. Compare also Die Pfalbau- 

 Alter-thumer von Moosedorf im Kanton Bern, by M. M. Yahn and Uhlmann, 

 published in 1857.] For an admirable account of these Swiss lake dwellings 

 built on piles, and the rude pottery, stone celts, axes, hammers, and other 

 instruments discovered among the piles, see Sir Charles Lyell's Antiquity of 

 Man p. 17. Also Natural History Review Jan. 9th, 1862. And for the Irish 

 lake dwellings or " Crannoges," wherein were found canoes hollowed out of a 

 single tree, imbedded deep in peat and moss, together with sundry ornaments of 

 cannel coal; see Archoeological Journal, vol. iii. p. 44. Also Antiquity of Man, 

 p. 29. See also chap. ii. pp. 11 — 17, for a concise account of the famous Danish 

 Kjokken-Modding, or kitchen refuse heaps, of the aboriginal hunters and fishers. 

 These heaps contain shells of the oyster, cockle and other mollusks, bones of 

 various quadrupeds, birds and fish: flint knives, hatchets, and other instruments 

 of stone, horn, wood and bone, with fragments of coarse pottery. The mounds are 

 from 3 to 10 feet high, and some of them are 1000 feet long and 150 feet wide, 

 they are on the shores of most of the Danish islands, about 10 feet above the 

 level of the sea. For an exellent account of the researches of the Danish 

 Naturalists and Antiquaries drawn up by the able Swiss Geologist M. A. Morlot, 

 see the Bulletin de la Societe Yaudoise des Sci. Nat. t. vi. Lausanne 1860. 

 Also an able paper by Mr. John Lubbock in the Natural History Review, Oct., 



