1884.] 
379 
of the Biebr Lake. 
Duiing this lapse of time, extending certainly over 
aousands of years, the animal world, and especially the 
0 me st lc species, had passed through changes which M. 
btuder has investigated by means of the abundant material 
sx ;7 eine Museum. His attention has been especially 
liected. to the dog, swine, sheep, goat, ox, and horse, 
w list the coeval wild animals are merely noticed in passing 
in t ie intioduCtion to his memoir. The results are equally 
interesting from a zoological and from a historical point of 
view, and may thus be summarised : — 
In Schaffis, the station representing the most primitive 
type of culture, we find, along with domestic animals, beasts 
of the chase in about equal numbers. Amongst these, furry 
species play a part much more prominent than in the pile- 
villages of more recent date. Among the tame animals 
tneie is little variety. The dog, the swine, the goat, the 
sheep, and the ox are represented each by a single homo- 
geneous race. Not one of them has an endemic wild 
representative, from which we might conclude that it had 
been tamed on the spot. The dog is the small “ peat-dog,” 
very different from the wolf. The swine differs clearly from 
the wild boar, and the ox from the urus. Wild representa- 
tives of the forms Capra and Ovis were then as little known 
in the Swiss plain as at present. 
As legal ds other pile-villages in Switzerland the same 
facts appear to hold good. According to Rdtimeyer the 
small peat-cow was met with almost exclusively in the 
oldest , settlements, Wangen and Moossedorf. The “ peat- 
swine ” of Moossedorf seems to have been little modified by 
domestication. The sheep is only represented by the small 
peculiar race. As wild representatives of these species were 
absent in Swizerland even in the epoch of the pile-villages, 
they must have been brought from their aboriginal home by 
the first men who settled on the Swiss lakes. WTere is this 
primitive home to be sought ? An indication is given by the 
use of stones foreign to Switzerland, such as jade or nephrite 
from Asia, foi the manufacture of axes. The probable 
oiigin of the dog is the northern declivity of the great 
Asiatic mountain mass. The decisive researches of MM. 
Nathusius and Rutimeyer have placed the Asiatic origin of 
the “ peat-swine ” beyond doubt. 
Rutimeyer considers that the Brachyceros ox has the 
closest affinity to the Indian forms of the genus Bos. The 
origin of the goat-horned race of sheep has yet to be 
sought, but it certainly deviates plainly in the formation of 
the horns from those which may be traced back to the 
2C2 
