huts. At Robenhausen, M. Messikomer up at several points in the area of the lake discovered in the peaty mud "horizontal dwellings, and at a considerable depth. M. beds from two to ten inches thick, vary of a boy hardly come to puberty. In the colvon Bonstetten possesses a perfect frontal bone ing in extent, composed entirely of the lection of the Count de Pourtales there are excrements of cows, pigs, sheep, and similar specimens, with (if I mistake not) goats, together with the remains of the pieces of the cranium; and I have in my poslitter they had used. . . . The litter for session a left femur and a right humerus, the the cows consisted chiefly of straws and first that of a middle-sized, slender individual, rushes; that for the smaller animals was probably a female, the latter of a somewhat of sprigs of fir and twigs of brush wood. younger person. The epiphyses are wanting In these masses of excrements may be and the ends exhibit clear and indubitable in these two bones, both above and below, noticed the chrysalis shells of the insects traces of gnawing by some carnivorous aniwhich are so numerous at the present mal, but whether by a small bear, or a great day in the manure found in the cattle- dog, or other beasts, can hardly be decided. sheds." As far as can be judged from a superficial examination, none of the portions of the skull mentioned above exhibit any savage types, for the forehead is regularly arched, and is considerably high."-Pp. 188, 189.

We cannot now attempt to paint the picture of the manners and life of the lake dwellers, for which this resuscitated fauna and flora of their times, with all its manifold relations to the human population, furnish so ample materials. Very many of the facts above recited suggest their own interpretation, and of themselves depict in vivid colors the condition and habits of the pre-historic men. It will suffice to say that they were manifestly at once a hunting, fishing, and agricultural people; that they domesticated and sheltered, side by side with their own dwellings on the waters, a number of animals still holding the first place among the herds and flocks of Switzerland and Europe in general; and that, while the geological features of the lake country were pretty much what they are in our own day, the vegetable and animal world surrounding the pile builders, with some notable exceptions, was the existing world as it is known in the neighborhood of Zürich, Berne, and Geneva.

Perhaps the supreme puzzle belonging to the case of this mysterious people is the fact that scarcely any remains of their persons are anywhere to be met with. No burying-place on shore has ever been found attached to any of the settlements; and either no human bones whatever have been dredged out of the relic beds, or such as have been discovered have been too few and fragmentary to throw much light upon the subject. Perhaps the most important discovery of this kind is the one at Greng, of which M. Uhlmann says:

Fragments of a human skull and ribs were dug up at Meilen. Sipplingen furnished a parietal bone, the only trace of the human skeleton yet met with on the Lake at Constance. 66 Amongst an extraordinary number of bones" of various animals found at Concise, there were "only one fragment of an adult human skull, the frontal bone of a child, and a lower jaw with the second great molar tooth springing up." Last of all, Marin has supplied a basketful of human remains, probably from eight individuals; among them is a skull now in the museum of M. Desor, a drawing of which would have been a valuable addition to Dr. Keller's large and interesting body of illustrative plates. As to the personal build of the men of the Swiss lake dwellings, however, we must needs, for the present, put up with ignorance. Whether the bulk of their remains be buried under the glaciers, as has been suggested, or not, we see no reason why future discoveries in the lake beds themselves should not enable us to reconstruct in full the osseous framework of this pre-historic type of our species.

Meanwhile, there comes up with great force of interest the question of the era, origin, and relations of this vanished population of the waters. Who were the lake dwellers? When did they first settle in Switzerland? How long did they continue there? And what has become of them?

In dealing with these and similar in"Remains of human bones have been dug quiries, Dr. Keller has been careful not

refuge or of occasional meeting for the people of the main-land. We entirely agree with Dr. Keller and Mr. Lee, that this theory of temporary abode can never be sustained. The labor expended on the substructures; the erection of separate huts, and the accommodations made in them for the convenience of separate families; the keeping of the cattle on the house-platforms; "the repeated repair and reërection of the settlements after having been burnt;" the relic beds, lying one above the other, with their enormous quantity of bones and remains of domestic implements; the character of the fruits and seeds, which belong to the whole circle of the seasons; "the non-existence on any of the shores or banks near the lake dwellings of the stone age of any similar remains;" all go to prove that the so-called lake dwellers really made the settlements their homes, and that they were the chief theatre and sphere of their life, year after year, and

to tread in the steps of some who have gone before him. While holding the prime articles of the faith of modern European geologists and antiquarians, he is much more discriminating in his use and application of them. He recognizes, for example-as we think rightly-the general fact, that there were three successive periods in the pre-historic development of the civilization of Western Europe; that there was a period, the most ancient of the three, when the population had no use of metals-their implements and weapons of all kinds being manufactured out of stone, bone, horn, and wood; that this era was followed by another, in which bronze became known, and by degrees took the place, to a great extent, of the older and simpler materials; and that bronze, in its turn, was superseded, after a considerable lapse of time, by the knowledge and paramount employment of iron; that, in fact, the Scandinavian doctrine of the ages of stone, bronze, and iron represents a re-generation after generation. What beality, and that, under certain restrictions and modifications, it may be made to subserve the interests of historical and chronological science. But in applying this well-known theory to the case of the lake dwellers, he speaks with much greater reserve than M. Troyon; indeed, his speculations on all the points to which we have just adverted are marked by a caution and good sense which are much to be commended. Our space will not admit of our going at large into Dr. Keller's argument. We must content ourselves with stating briefly what seem to be the main issues to which his facts compel us.

1. It is quite evident, whoever the lake dwellers were, that they continued to occupy their settlements in times which are strictly historical. The Roman remains found at Marin and elsewhere remains occurring under precisely the same conditions as the mass of the lake dwelling relics-are conclusive evidence that such was the fact.

2. While it is probable that fear of enemies had much to do with the original establishment of the lake dwellings, appearances are strongly against the hypothesis of M. Desor and others, who will have the settlements to be partly magazines and arsenals, partly places of

came of their dead is a mystery; but it is not greater under Dr. Keller's exposition of the use of the settlements, than it is under the theory which he confutes.

3. The lake dwellings are not all of the same era. They have a chronology; and, while almost wholly pre-historic, belong some to a remoter, some to a comparatively recent age. It would be utterly unscientific and arbitrary to assume that the settlements in which stone implements are found were first formed; then those in which the implements are of bronze; then, last of all, those in which iron implements are seen to obtain. For, in the first place, no such hard lines of distinction as this doctrine would draw among the settlements exists in fact; and secondly, it would be quite conceivable that the settlements, having been all established at one and the same epoch, the people inhabiting them passed through successive phases of civilization, and, having begun as workers in stone, became subsequently workers in bronze and iron, as they made acquaintance with these metals through barter and through direct and indirect communication with foreign tribes and races. The fact, however, adverted to under the last head-namely,

pushed further back. So far as we know,
science has not shown the improbability
of this hypothesis; and, until it is proved
untenable, we hold it as, in view of every-
thing, a more scientific solution of the
question in debate than that furnished by
its rival. Here, however, neither Roben-
hausen nor any other phenomena with
which we have to do demand or even need
a space of time greater than some one or
two thousand years before the Christian
era. While we believe, with Dr. Kel-
ler, that a high antiquity must be assign-
ed to the so-called stone settlements, we
are not surprised to hear M. Troyon,
near the outset of his volume, say:
"Let
it be well understood, then, that the stone
age-the relics of which are discovered
in the lakes and in the graves-is recog-
nized, in this work, as subsequent to the
Mosaic deluge."

that in certain localities settlements are found built upon the tombs of former settlements-is clear demonstration that distance in time divided the erection of some of the lake dwellings from the erection of others of them. This is very fully illustrated by M. Messikomer's report on the Robenhausen settlement, from which it appears that this settlement is a triple one, and consists of three distinct settlements, the remains of which are piled one on the top of the other, the lowermost and next above it having -been destroyed by fire previous to the driving of the third and topmost series of pile foundations. And when we couple with this the consideration that, where bronze and iron tools were in use, the lake dwellings run into deeper water than where they are distinctively of stone, not only is a chronological period established as distinguished from a single epoch-but the theory is favored which looks upon a stone settlement like Wan-ers, whatever the time of their coming gen as, cæteris paribus, older than a bronze one like Morges, and a bronze one like Morges as, cæteris paribus, older than an iron one like Marin. How the chronological scale is to be graduated, and where we are to fix in time the original establishment of pile settlements in Switzerland, are quite different questions, and questions which we think Dr. Keller is wise in postponing to a more advanced stage of our knowledge.

4. We find no scientific compulsion, however, which insists upon a very enormous antiquity for the pile dwellings. We do not admit this compulsion in view of the question of the antiquity of the human race as a whole. It may be perfectly true-we suppose it cannot be honestly denied that man has coëxisted in Western Europe with the mammoth, the rhinoceros tichorinus, and other extinct mammals. But there is another explanation of this phenomenon besides the theory which runs man's age in the earth up into a dozen or twenty milleniums beyond the starting-points of history. Suppose, instead of man being so much older than we used to think him, it should turn out that our mammals are so much younger, and that the rhinoceros and mammoth period must be brought lower down, and not the human period

5. Further, we heartily endorse Dr. Keller's conviction, that the lake dwell

into Switzerland, and how great and numerous soever the changes which passed upon them during their long occupation of the country, were one and the same people. M. Troyon contends that the nationality of the stone people was quite distinct from that of the race which used the metal implements, and that the estab lishment of bronze and iron settlements upon the territory occupied by those of stone must be attributed to immigration and conquest. Dr. Keller argues, and we think triumphantly, that the facts of the case are strongly opposed to such a theory. Two considerations alone, both urged by Dr. Keller, appear to us to be fatal to the idea of successive and diverse populations. In the first place, it is incredible that two or three distinct races should all take to the unnatural and laborious way of living adopted by the pile dwellers. If bronze men or iron men had invaded the country of the stone men, and had made themselves masters of their settlements, it is morally certain they would most carefully abstain from the practice of living in huts built on the tops of timbers thrust into lake bottoms. And, again, if this were supposable, it is not supposable that such heterogeneous populations should drive their piles, and lay their platforms, and

build and furnish their houses, and fash- | started, when the world was young, from ion their chief implements, as was the the steppes and waters of High Asia; fact with the lake dwellers, all on the that they came, we know not when, but same model. Nothing is more certain many hundreds of years before Christ, than that the pile dwellings in every age into Switzerland, bringing with them the are constructed in precisely the same dog, cow, sheep, goat, and horse, undermanner; and how this circumstance can standing agriculture likewise, and cultibe made to tally with M. Troyon's theory, vating wheat, barley, and flax; that or with any other theory than that of moved by some mysterious idiosyncrasy the race-unity of the lake-dwelling peo- of race, and urged by pressure of exterple, we are at a loss to understand. nal circumstances, they addicted themselves to the strange fashion of living which we have described in the foregoing pages, and that the habit of such a manner of life being formed, and corroborated by their lot, they continued age after age to follow their primeval customs, till the power and civilization of the Romans came and abolished them for ever.

6. What, then, was the nationality of the Swiss lake-dwellers? M. Troyon says that the men of bronze were Celts, and that the men of stone were a preCeltic population. Dr. Keller maintains that all were Celts together. His words in summing up are:

"Believing as we do that the different settlements in what are called the stone, the bronze, and the iron ages, do not indicate a succession of races or the destruction of one people by another, but merely different grades

of civilization among one and the same people, and a continued progress in handicraft ability; believing also that the lake dwellers did not form a peculiar caste, but, as is shown at Ebersberg and other places, belonged to the very people who at the same time lived on the main-land; and knowing that, according to the universal opinion of many French and English antiquaries, the bronze objects of a peculiar form and quite as peculiar ornamentation, such as those found in the settlements, both on the land and in the lakes, have always been attributed to the Celts; knowing also that history makes no mention of any other people but the Celts, who in the very earliest ages possessed the middle of Europe, and in later times received their civilization from the Romans, we believe that it would be contrary to all the facts adduced to arrive at any other conclusion but this, that the builders of the lake dwellings were a branch of the Celtic population of Switzerland, but that the earlier settlements belong to the pre-historic period, and had already fallen into decay before the Celts took their place in the history of Europe."-P. 313.

To this finding-a finding which sorts exactly with all we know of the Helvetii and Celtic populations of Central Europe in general, whether from Cæsar or other ancient authorities-we give our cordial adhesion. Subject to the correction of future discovery, we hold with Dr. Keller, that our lake dwellers were a portion of that great Celtic migration which

We are reluctantly compelled to omit all detailed notice of the lake dwellings which have been discovered and examined of late, south of the Alps and beyond the Swiss area, as well as of those half-cousins of the pile buildings, the socalled crannoges and crannogs—a kind of insular stockades found in different parts of North Britain and Ireland. For these we must refer our readers partly to chapters devoted to these two subjects in Dr. Keller's volume, partly to the valuable memoirs on the one and the other contained in the masterly works of Sir John Lubbock and Sir Charles Lyell. It will be enough to say here, that both the stockade structures on the one hand, and the actual pile buildings of Savoy, of Lombardy, of Bavaria, of Mecklenburg, etc., on the other, all point in one direction, and serve to add certainty to the conclusions at which Dr. Keller has arrived with respect to the Celtic origin and relationships of the Swiss lake builders.

Our best thanks are due to Mr. Lee for the judgment and care with which he has edited Dr. Keller's very valuable series of reports. He has opened to the view of Englishmen a new chapter in the hitherto unwritten history of human kind, and has furnished the devout and wise with fresh material for reflection on the marvellous character and government of Him whose judgments are unsearchable, and His ways past finding out.