and stone industrial implements, that had
recently been discovered in the Moosseedorf and
other lakes in Switzerland; yet, even here, I
should say, that the ingenuity displayed in the
structure of these peculiar instruments
betokened a people already somewhat advanced out
of the first state of barbarism. The odd thing,
that strikes an observer first, is the small,
toy-like character of everything. Hatchet,
indeed! One of these Lake-people hatchets
lies on the quarter-sheet of foolscap on which
I am writing, with room to spare. It is
a pretty baby-hatchet, a piece of serpentine,
not two inches long (very well sharpened,
however), inserted with wonderful firmness into a
detached portion of stag's-horn. I asked the
professor, "Could any one have ever cut down
a tree with that small thing?" The professor
replied that by marks found on the old buried
timber, it appeared probable that the ancient
Lakers charred and nearly burnt through the
trunks of the trees before they felled them with
their miniature stone-hatchets. My attention
was next turned to a dandy poniard, entirely
of stag's-horn. A sharp-pointed and polished.
piece of horn, about four inches long, is inserted
into an unpolished piece of antler, somewhat
longer. The professor suggested that the
handle of this poniard was worn almost smooth
by use. I said, "Could the owner have killed
so many men as that implies?" "No!" returned
the professor, with a smile; "but the dagger
may have served many uses—as a defence from
wild beasts, to kill animals in the chase, and,
perhaps, now and then, to despatch an enemy." Next,
I admired a variety of small instruments that
would have gone into a lady's étui—needles of
bone, not perforated, and even a bodkin,
properly perforated, a specimen almost unique:
small chisels of beautifully polished serpentine,
some of which looked quite gem-like in their
green half-transparent lustre. These were
supposed to be for cutting leather for mocassins or
other garments. Then I noticed teeth of the
red deer fastened into handles of rough horn.
These, it is supposed, were used for polishing
down the protuberant seams of barbarian dresses.

Very curious, indeed, were certain minute
saws, not more than three inches long, like
reductions of Queen Elizabeth's pocket-comb,
with the teeth broken off. These flint saws,
and one or two scoop-like articles that looked
as if meant to scrape off the hair from deer-hides,
also of flint, give rise, as Professor Troyon
observed, to curious speculations. Flint of any
kind is very rare in Switzerland, and flint of the
particular kind from which the ancient Lakers
had wrought their saws and knives, is not found
in Switzerland.

The induction is, that the Lake-people were
already sufficiently advanced in civilisation, to
have made the first step towards commerce by
import, or barter. The especial silex of the
Lakers might have come from some neighbouring
portion of Gaul; but, in truth, it resembled
more the kind of flint that is found on our own
British coasts. To have fashioned a flint knife,
such as was shown me, four inches long, the
improving savages of the Lacustrine period
must have had a very large flint-stone, such as
Great Britain peculiarly produces. Waving a too
precise settlement of this curious question, we,
at least, are sure that the flint found at Moosseedorf
was not a native production of Switzerland.
There were also small arrow-heads prettily and
neatly wrought from a fine kind of silex.

Under a glass and framed like a picture, I
observed something that looked like coarse
dark netting, the reticulations of which were
jointed by rude knots. This, the professor
told me, was a specimen of the supposed
garments of the ancient people; of which the
material was flax, and the mode of putting
together, knitting, or rather knotting: the art of
weaving not yet being practised by the Lakers.
Some of the mysterious-looking needles in horn
might have served for the manufacture of this
primitive sort of shirting.

For food the Lakers had, as the remains of
various seeds and fruit-stones demonstrated,
the wood-raspberry, the wild plum ("prunus
spinosa," which we unlearned schoolboys used
to call bullas), small crab-apples, of which a
dried and venerable specimen was shown me,
and wheaten corn, sundry masses of which,
apparently carbonised by fire, demonstrated that
agriculture was an art not unknown.

Fragments of bones of various animals, which
were discovered in quantities under the peat,
and had either been used in the fashioning of
instruments, or were the remains of antique
repasts, proved that this primitive people already
possessed the greater part of the domestic
animals of our day. The professor showed me
bones enough, in this departmeat, to have served
as the basis of a Cuiverian lecture on osteology.
The Lakers had certainly gathered round them the
ox, the pig, the goat, the cat, and many different
sized kinds of dogs; nor had the horse been
wanting, though, as the professor conjectured,
chiefly used, by a sublime anticipation of
Parisian gastronomy, as an article of food. With
these were mingled quantities of bones of the
elk and stag, the urus, bear, wild-boar, fox,
beaver, tortoise, and various kinds of birds.
Strange to say, the bones that one would most
have expected a Lake-people to have left behind
them—fish-bones—were entirely absent; for
which absence, however, their chemical
decomposition by some unknown agent might by
possibility account.

Of what materials the habitations of the
primitive Lakers were constructed, the professor now
gave me ocular demonstration. First, I was shown
what kind of stakes or piles their lake-cabins were
elevated upon; the stakes themselves
I did not see, only casts of them; for, when
these very ancient piles were first taken out
of the peat they had looked fresh and solid
as those human bodies which have occasionally
been found in airless stone coffins, bodies which
for a moment have mocked the view with a
phantasma of fresh life, and, almost
immediately after, fallen to dust. So with the