398 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
by tbe permanence of the holes in which they stood. On this 
point he relates that, on one occasion, in a space measuring 210 
square metres he counted no less than 124 “huche di pali.” Nay, 
more, some of these holes had become filled up with infiltrated 
material which subsequently hardened and formed actual casts of 
the original wood. 
The scarcity of fuel in Italy has fostered the habit of utilizing 
peat-bogs to the fullest extent; and for this purpose the smaller 
basins, which have become nearly filled up with combustible 
material, are occasionally completely cleared out. From an 
archseological point of view no exploration could be more satis- 
factory than such undertakings, as, with a little care on the part of 
the workmen, all stray objects are bound to fall into their hands. 
It so happened that two small basins so treated, viz., Lagozza, in 
the province of Milan, and Polada, near Desenzano, contained the 
remains of a lake-dwelling, and both of them have yielded such a 
valuable series of relics that the entire life-history of their inhabi- 
tants can be portrayed. 
Perhaps there is no locality in Europe which contains a greater 
variety of the vestiges of past humanity than the valley of the Po. 
The unique discoveries made in the cemeteries of Bologna and 
surrounding district clearly reveal the footsteps of the successive 
races who inhabited the Circumpadana during, and subsequent to, 
its occupancy by the lake-dwellers. The lower beds of the 
terramara-mounds contain the earliest relics of the Bronze Age in 
Europe, while the upper ones are so intermingled and overlapped 
with Etruscan, Gaulish, and Roman remains that it is by no means 
an easy task to decipher their entanglements. But the ethnological 
problems suggested by these various civilizations I must for the 
present pass over. 
Among the more important of later investigations in North Italy 
may be mentioned those conducted at Peschiera and II Mincio (De 
Stefani), in Lake Eimon (Lioy), in the small Lake of Arqua- 
Petrarca, near Padua (Cordenons), in the Lakes of Yarese and 
Monate, and in the terramara of Eontanellato, near Parma (Pigorini). 
On the Isola Yirginia, a prettily-wooded island in Lake Yarese, 
there is a museum, erected by Sig. Ponti of Milan, which contains 
a large assortment of lacustrine relics collected in the neighbourhood. 
