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JOURNAL  OF  HORTICULTURE  AND  COTTAGE  GARDENER. 
August  18,  1SC2. 
Rambles  in  Switzerland. 
( Continued  frontpage  168.) 
Geology  and  archaeology  have  taught  us  from  facts — and 
facts,  like  figures,  are  tough  evidence,  that  we  have  wrongly 
interpreted  the  only  wi*itten  record  of  man’s  first  existence 
on  our  globe.  Those  facts  tell  that  man  was  here  ages  before 
that  in  which  he  has  been  usually  thought  to  have  been 
created.  Prominent  among  those  facts  are  the  remains  of 
the  Pfahlbauten,  or  lake-dwellings,  in  Lake  Zurich.  That 
word  of  ugly  aspect  is  a  pure  German  word,  signifying  “  pile- 
buildings  ” — houses  on  a  structure  of  piles  or  posts.  The 
inhabitants  lived  many  thousands  of  years  ago,  but  have  left 
“  no  record  of  their  date  remaining  ”  but  the  submerged 
remains  of  those  piles,  the  stone  implements  they  employed, 
and  fragments  of  their  daily  surroundings  that  have  been 
extraordinarily  preserved  in  the  peat  formed  where  water  had 
been  below  their  dwellings.  The  first  discovery  of  the  re¬ 
mains  of  these  dwellings  has  thus  been  told : — “  In  1853,  the 
inhabitants  of  Ober-Meilen,  a  village  on  the  lake  of  Zurich, 
availed  themselves  of  the  unusual  lowness  of  the  waters  to 
reclaim  a  piece  of  land  from  the  lake.  The  excavations  dis¬ 
closed  a  number  of  remains  of  deeply-driven  piles,  formed  of 
various  forest  trees.  In  the  mud  around  these  piles  the 
attentive  investigation  of  Dr.  Keller  detected  the  remains 
which  threw  the  first  light  on  the  nature  of  the  discovery. 
There,  heaped  together,  lay  stone  axes,  and  hammers,  and 
■chisels  or  celts  with  their  hafts  of  horn,  rude  implements  for 
■crushing  corn,  a  great  variety  of  coarse  pottery,  implements 
of  bone,  lance  and  arrow-heads,  knives,  saws,  &c.,  all  of 
flint,  in  rich  abundance,  although  flint  is  not  a  natural  pro¬ 
duct  of  Switzerland.  Some  of  the  smaller  celts,  or  chisels, 
are  formed  of  nephrite,  a  species  of  transparent  jade,  a  stone 
imagined  to  be  entirely  peculiar  to  the  East.  The  saws,  in 
particular,  are  curious  examples  of  human  ingenuity  under 
difficulties.  They  are  formed  of  longth  in  flakes  of  flint,  one 
edge  of  which  is  finely  notched,  and  the  other  fitted  into  a 
neatly  formed  long  wooden  handle,  the  perfect  preserva¬ 
tion  of  which  may  probably  be  attributed  to  the  antiseptic 
influence  of  the  peat  wherein  it  had  so  long  remained.  A 
kind  of  bituminous  cement  appears  to  have  been  used  for 
securing  the  saw  in  its  handle. 
One  would  like  to  know  how  the  pile-driving  was  man¬ 
aged,  but  driven  the  piles  were,  at  a  distance  from  1ft  to 
300ft  from  the  shore,  at  a  depth  of  6ft  or  7ft,  gradually  ad¬ 
vancing  into  deeper  water.  They  were  then  extended 
parallel  with  the  shore  till  the  pfahlbau  assumed  somewhat 
of  the  form  of  a  narrow  parallelogram.  At  Morges,  on  the 
lake  of  Geneva,  the  piles  extend  ‘  1,200ft  in  length,  by  120ft 
in  width,  giving  a  platform  surface  of  some  18,000ft.  On 
this  M.  Troyon  calculates  that  some  316  cabins  may  easily 
have  stood;  which,  only  allowing  four  persons  to  a  cabin, 
would  give  a  population  of  1,264.’  On  these  piles,  driven  at 
short  intervals,  was  laid  a  platform  on  which  stood  the 
cabins,  constructed,  as  there  is  good  authority  for  believing, 
of  wattled  work  plastered  with  clay.'  From  the  extra¬ 
ordinary  number  of  reliques  found  it  is  supposed  the  planks 
of  the  platform  were  not  set  close  together,  and  that  things 
were  hence  continually  falling  through  ;  but  there  would 
scarcely  appear  need  for  such  an  hypothesis.  It  is  clear 
that  the  great  mass  of  pfahlbauten  were  fired,  purposely  or 
accidentally.  In  buildings  so  constructed  fire  would  spread 
too  rapidly  to  allow  the  inhabitants  to  save  much  of  their 
property,  which  accordingly  would  sink  to  the  bottom  of  the 
lake.  Indeed,  the  carbonised  state  of  many  things,  especi¬ 
ally  the  vegetable  products,  has  preserved  them  for  the  ex¬ 
amination  of  modern  science. 
In  the  masses  of  carbonised  grain  discovered  at  Wangen 
and  elsewhere,  Professor  Oswald  Heir  recognised  several 
cereals — Triticum  vulgare  ;  Triticum  dicoccon ;  also  Hor- 
deum  distichon,  and  Hordeum  hexastichon.  The  pfahl¬ 
bauten  of  Wangen  and  Robenhausen  have  also  furnished 
abundant  examples  of  a  coarse  bread  savouring  rather  of 
bruised  corn  than  meal.  It  was  probably  baked  on  hot 
stones,  and  covered  with  hot  embers,  just  as  in  the  Rigsmaal 
Saga  ‘  Edda  drew  out  from  the  embers  a  bread  cake,  heavy, 
sticky,  and  full  of  bran.’  In  the  same  pfahlbau,  too,  were 
stores  of  Apples  and  Pears  cut  into  halves  and  quarters,  and 
dried  in  the  sun  for  winter  food.  The  custom  holds  in 
Switzerland  to  this  day,  and  these  dried  Apple  cuttings  are 
sold  by  measure  in  the  markets  under  the  name  of  scnitze. 
From  the  size  of  some  of  this  carbonised  fruit  it  would  appear 
that  the  Apples  must  have  been  of  a  cultivated  kind,  so  these 
people  were  acquainted  to  a  certain  degree  not  only  with 
corn,  but  with  fruit  culture. 
Flax  and  hemp  they  certainly  had,  and  the  means  of 
spinning  it,  which  was  of  the  last  necessity  for  their  nets. 
Nothing  exists  to  show  any  knowledge  of  the  art  of  weaving, 
but  they  contrived  to  manufacture  a  coarse  flaxen  plaited 
material.  In  addition  to  their  other  means  of  subsistence 
they  had  always  the  lake  at  command,  and  the  great  variety 
of  fish-hooks  discovered  shows  that  they  knew  how  to  take 
full  advantage  of  it  with  the  line  as  well  as  the  net. 
Great,  indeed,  was  the  interest  with  which  I  inspected 
the  numerous  relics  of  Pfahlbauten  preserved  in  the  Zurich 
museum.  The  sharpened  ends  of  the  piles,  I  think,  show 
that  they  were  of  a  Coniferous  tree,  probably  Abies  excelsa. 
The  Apples,  halved,  are  black  masses  ;  they  were  evidently 
carbonised  by  exposure  to  intense  heat  whilst  the  air  was 
excluded.  They  were  probably  stored  in  close  vessels.  The 
pulp  is  black,  a  mere  mass  of  charcoal ;  the  Core  is  somewhat 
paler,  and  the  pips  are  quite  distinct,  as  shown  in  this  por¬ 
trait  of  one. 
What  thoughts  crowd  upon  one !  What  reflections  that 
we  are  looking  upon  forms  that  other  human  eyes  looked 
upon,  since  which  so  very  many  thousands  of  years  have 
passed !  Then,  probably,  as  now,  a  winter  store  of  dried 
fruits  was  essential  for  the  preservation  of  health.  I  pon¬ 
dered  over  the  uninterrupted  succession  of  Pear,  Cherry, 
Walnut,  and  Apple  trees  that  margin  all  the  roajis  in  the 
Swiss  valleys,  and  wondered  what  could  be  done  with  their 
produce.  I  at  last  was  told.  In  winter  the  dried  fruit  is 
almost  the  only  vegetable  produce,  except  bread,  that  is 
available  to  mingle  with  their  animal  food.  In  some  alpine 
districts  that  animal  food  is  only  such  as  has  been  salted, 
and  the  consequences  have  been  told  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Mac¬ 
millan  in  his  most  interesting  little  volume,  “  Holidays  on 
High  Lands.”  Speaking  of  the  monks  of  St.  Bernard  he 
says  :  “  During  winter  they  have  no  fresh  meat,  being  obliged 
to  subsist  upon  salted  beef  and  mutton,  usually  killed  and 
preserved  in  September,  and,  which  is  worse  still,  they  have 
no  vegetables,  all  attempts  at  gardening  in  the  place  having 
proved  abortive,  so  that  not  unfrequently  scurvy  is  added  to 
their  sufferings.” 
The  fruit  of  the  Cherry,  including  the  stone,  is  crushed, 
fermented,  and  a  spirit  distilled  from  the  mass,  so  potent 
and  pleasant,  that  it  is  degraded  by  being  named,  as  it  is 
named — “  Cherry-water  ” — Kirschwasser. 
In  the  Zurich  museum  are  preserved  many  other  relics 
besides  those  of  the  lake-dwellers  ;  but  I  must  not  linger 
here  over  “  The  Twelfth-day  Queen,”  Jane  Gray’s  neatly- 
written  letters  to  Bullinger,  nor  to  the  “  infirm-of-purpose  ” 
looking  scrawl  of  Cranmer  ;  but  I  note  more  fittingly  for  your 
pages  that  there  are  original  and  very  satisfactory  portraits 
of  Conrad  Gesner,  Scheuchzer,  and  Lavater. — W.  J. 
(To  be  continued.) 
Summer  Bedding:  Plants  and  Arrangements, 
When  our  country  became  more  prosperous  and  wars  abroad 
had  for  the  period  ceased,  a  new  style  of  flower-gardening 
became  adopted  in  the  third  decade  of  last  century.  It  became 
the  desire  of  the  gentry  and  the  object  of  their  gardeners,  to 
ensure  a  brilliant,  massed  display  of  certain  summer-flowering 
plants,  arranged  closely  and  all  of  one  sort  in  formal  beds  on 
parterres.  In  these  days,  when  the  octogenarians  William  Paul 
and  Robert  Fenn  were  little  more  than  infants,  the  gardeners 
of  Britain  had  an  extremely  limited  selection  of  plants  where¬ 
with  to  work,  for  hybridism  had  only  then  been  started,  and 
type  plants  (species)  were  confined  to  the  South  African  Pelar¬ 
goniums  and  Succulentse,  with  Mignonette,  Hydrangea  hortensis, 
Lee’s  Fuchsia,  and  Calceolarias  ;  probably  also  Lobel’s  little  blue 
flower  (Lobelia)  which  poisons  (?)  the  sheep  in  its  Australian 
home.  But  with  some  of  these  a  beginning  was  made,  and  was 
so  effective,  that  eventually  the  gardeners  became  enamoured 
at  the  brightness  and  trigginess  of  their  yearly  efforts,  vieing 
the  more  to  place  a  design  of  greater  intricacy,  and  in  colours 
more  gaudy,  before  the  eyes  of  their  patrons,  till  at  length  the 
carpet-bedding  style  was  evolved,  and  developed  to  iinreason- 
able  extremes.  Efforts  now  veered  to  the  production  of  subdued 
effects,  and  what  the  horticultural  historian  records  as  the 
neutral  style,  came  into  being,- this  giving  place  in  later  times 
