248 
by Professor His, who considers that it does not differ much 
from the ordinary Swiss type. And while his work was in 
the press, M. Rutimeyer received from M. Schwab four more 
skulls, two of which were obtained at Nidan- Steinberg, one 
at Sutz, and one from Biel. 
M. Troyon has a very interesting chapter on the different 
modes of burial ; he points out that the disposition of the 
corpse after death had a deep meaning, and is perhaps of 
greater importance than the nature of the tomb, which must 
in many cases have depended upon that of the materials 
which came to hand. The Greeks generally burnt their dead ; 
considering fire as the means of purification, while the Per- 
sians shrank from such an act, regarding fire, according to 
Herodotus, as a deity. Other nations, looking upon the earth 
as the universal mother, returned into her bosom the remains 
of their dead, fortunately ignorant of the deduction that as 
we brought nothing into the world so we can take nothing 
out of it, and regarding it therefore as a sacred duty to bury 
with the departed his most useful weapons and most beauti- 
ful ornaments. This belief seems to have been almost as 
general as the hope of a resurrection, and even among the 
Jews we find a trace of it in the words of Ezekiel (ch. xxxii., 
v. 27). "And they shall not lie with the mighty that are 
" fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell 
" with their weapons of war." 
In tombs of the stone age the corpse appears to have been 
almost always, if not always, buried in a sitting position, with 
the knees brought up under the chin, and the hands crossed 
over the breast. This attitude occurs also in many Asiatic, 
African, and American tombs. 
Making allowance for the marine animals, such as the seals 
and oysters, the cockles, whelks, &c, the fauna thus indicated 
by the remains found in the Swiss lakes, agrees remarkably 
with that which characterises the Danish Kjokkenmoddings, 
