321 
Another case brought forward from abroad but recently, has 
found much favour here as there.* Around the Lake of Zurich 
there are left traces of ancient lakes at somewhat higher levels. 
A bed of clay below with glacial stones, a bed of plants between 
half-turned to coal, a mass of clay moraine-like on the top, 
tell of the time when Alpine ice crept further down the hills, 
and touched upon the lake, now more, now less encroaching. 
In these beds the peaty mass of lignite, known as Diirnten 
coal, was largely dug for fuel. I have worked a long time 
down below to see the evidence myself. The sequence of the 
beds is clear. But recently two Swiss professors have proclaimed 
that they have obtained proofs incontestable that man was there, 
and wove a basket, fragments of which were found among the 
drifted plants which formed the coal. These fragments, it is 
said, consist of pointed sticks, sharpened across the grain, not 
tapering naturally, and a cross set of binding withies, all 
now pressed and changed, but by such characters referred to 
work of man. Now I have found myself along the shore 
fragments of wood and twigs half decomposed and waveworn 
till they were cut to a point obliquely to the grain, as they 
describe the Diirnten sticks. Across such fragments often 
others fell, and when the whole was then compressed what 
wonder if they left a mark of wattle or of basket-work ? and 
the whole mass has suffered such great pressure from the 
superincumbent weight of clay that all the round twigs and 
stems are squeezed quite flat, as in the specimens before you. 
These Diirnten pointed sticks, however, I have not seen, and, 
therefore, speak with caution, showing only how I think the 
thing might be otherwise explained. 
More recently the legitimate ambition to be first to make 
a great discovery, not controlled and kept subordinate to 
judgment, has adduced other examples, where the age of 
man has been too hastily referred to glacial or inter-glacial 
times. Whatever may be found hereafter, the evidence on 
which this case has now been based was not such as would 
justify the statements founded on it. Widespread beds of loam 
and sand, and gravel, cover the lower levels of East Anglia; 
and, probably ranging over a vast period, have been collec- 
tively described as “ middle-glacial, for below are glacial 
beds, and in the middle series boulder clay, and over them, 
whether in part remanie or not, another boulder clay. Lying 
in hollows and on the flanks of valleys, cut through this 
ancient loam and other beds, are river terraces of later date ; 
* Butimeyer, Archiv.fur A nthropologic, 1875 ; Heer, Primaeval World 
of Switzerland. 
