104 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society, 
of exactly similar remains, in such frequently occurring relations 
to one another, as leaves little douht of many of them having been 
contemporaneous in their use ; metallic substances being of course 
rarer and more valuable in those early days, as well as more perish- 
able, and necessitating in most localities at the same time, the 
frequent use of the more common articles of stone and bone. The 
piled sites in this country appear, however, to have been in use 
down even to a comparatively very recent period, and our Vice- 
President, Mr Joseph Kobertson, considers, as the result of his 
inquiries, that some of them had been occupied even in mediaeval 
times. 
We are told that habitations of a similar character still exist in 
some parts of the world, as among the Papoos of New Guinea ; and 
historical record tells us of their existence at least as far back as 
the fifth century before Christ. Herodotus, in chap. 16 and lib. v. 
of his Life/ states that when at the port of Eion on the river 
Strymon, in Thrace (b.c. 459), he paid a visit to a people who lived 
in houses built on piled platforms in the lake of Praseas — the 
Strymonic Lake — according to Colonel Leake the Tahhimos of the 
present day. This site has, it seems, been lately rediscovered by 
M. Delville,*^ and antiquaries, I am sure, will wait with much 
interest for a careful examination of these ancient lake dwellings 
with their buried remains, for comparison with those of the Swiss 
lakes; we would then be better able to judge whether, or how 
much, it might be necessary to add to an antiquity like this, of 
nearly 500 years before "Christ, when attempting to calculate the 
age of the corresponding remains that have been found in Western 
Europe. 
Chemical Analysis of the Bronze Implement found at Kinleith. — 
Being anxious to add another analysis of an ancient bronze to 
those already given in our Proceedings,^ I placed the bronze 
implement, found at Kinleith, in the hands of our well-known 
practical chemist and lecturer on chemistry, Dr Stevenson Mac- 
adam, asking him, at the same time, if he could give me any 
information of the cause of the different appearance and colour of 
the aerugo or patina which was shown on bronzes of different ages ; 
whether the particular appearance of the patina might give any 
information as to differences in their composition, and perhaps, 
1 Life and Travels of Herodotus by J. T. Wheeler, vol. i. p. 359, 1855 ; and 
Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. iii. p. 227, 1859. 
^ Nat. Hist. Review, vol. ii. p. 486, 1862. 
3 Proc. Ant. Scot., vol. iv. p. 600. 
