400 
Notices of Books. 
rjuly, 
brought from the east, and the advocates of the Oriental origin 
of the first settlers in Europe have supposed that they brought 
the implements made of it with them. But in that case, either 
the first settlers must have come laden with these implements 
to supply both themselves and their descendants, or the latter 
must have obtained them by barter from the east. In one of the 
latest settlements of the stone age — at Gerlafingen, in the Lake 
of Bienne — some of the finest jade-implements have been found. 
Two chisels of pure copper and some bronze celts of primitive 
type indicate that the people of this settlement lived at the close 
of the stone age. As they have been shown to be the descend- 
ants of the earlier lake dwellers, they could only have obtained 
these articles through traders, and, if they did so, their fore- 
fathers might have done the same. It is known that in ancient 
America copper articles found their wav from the northern lakes, 
passing from tribe to tribe far to the south, whilst, on the other 
hand, the obsidian implements of Mexico were carried north- 
ward. The system of barter exists now amongst tribes more 
rude and savage than the Swiss lake dwellers. In those parts 
of Asia where jade occurs amongst the rocks, the ancient inha- 
bitants would soon discover that they possessed an article of 
export for which they could obtain whatever they might wish in 
exchange from the nations of the West. And the latter, in the 
linen cloth they fabricated, had one article at least that they 
might barter for the coveted jade implements. 
About the origin of the still earlier people that lived in Swit- 
zerland and other parts of Europe long before the lake dwellers 
— the people of the reindeer period — we know absolutely 
nothing. We know that they lived in Europe along with ex- 
tindl species of elephant and rhinoceros, and many other animals 
not now found in Europe, and that in the latter part of their 
time the reindeer abounded throughout Central Europe and as 
far south as the Pyrenees. We know, too, that the climate was 
much colder, and that the musk sheep and other ardfic animals 
lived in the South of France. But where palaeolithic man came 
from there is as yet no evidence to show. 
His outgoing is almost as much shrouded in mystery as his 
incoming. He simply disappears, and with him vanish the 
great beasts amongst which he lived. There is not a single 
point of connexion between the latest of the palaeolithic and 
the earliest of the neolithic tribes. Both, it is true, used stone- 
implements, but they are so essentially distindl in type that they 
can be recognised at a glance, and there are no intermediate 
forms showing the development of the one from the other. We 
have seen that there has been a regular, quiet, and gradual pro- 
gression of the people of the stone age of the lake dwellings, 
through the bronze and iron periods, up to the present time. 
The people themselves are still represented, their arts remain, 
and every species of animal and plant they knew still exists. 
