several wives. They live in the following manner: on the planks every man has a hut, in which he dwells, with a trap door closely fitted in the planks, and leading down to the lake. They tie the young children with a cord round the foot, fearing lest they should fall into the lake beneath. To their horses and beasts of burden they give fish for fodder; of which there is such an abundance, that, when a man has opened his trap door, he lets down an empty basket by a cord into the lake, and, after waiting a short time, draws it up full of fish."
And certain savage or semi-savage tribes live in the same manner, even at the present day. The fishermen of Lake Prasias still inhabit wooden cottages built over the water, as in the time of Herodotus. In most of the large Swiss lakes these habitations have been discovered, numbering over 200 at the present date. M. Troyon has endeavored to make a retrospective census of those early times. The settlement at Morges, which is one of the largest in the Lake of Geneva, is 1,200 feet long and 150 broad, giving a surface of 180,000 square feet. Allowing the huts to have been fifteen feet in diameter, and supposing that they occupied half the surface, leaving the rest for gangways, he estimates the number of cabins at 311; and supposing again that, on an average, each was inhabited by four persons, he obtains for the whole a population of 1,244. Sixty eight villages belonging to the Bronze Age are supposed to have contained 42,500 persons; while for the preceding epoch, by the same process of reasoning, he estimates the population at 31,875.
Abundant animal remains are found in these lake dwellings, no less, indeed, than 70 species, of which 10 are fishes, four reptiles, 26 birds, and the remainder quadrupeds. The dog, pig, horse, goat, and sheep, are recognized, and at least two varieties of oxen. Remains of the horse are extremely rare. Three varieties of wheat were cultivated by the lake dwellers, who also possessed two kinds of barley, and two of millet. Of these the most ancient and most important were the small six rowed barley and small "lake dwellers'" wheat. The discovery of Egyptian wheat at Wangen and Robenhausen is particularly interesting. Oats were cultivated during the Bronze Age, but are absent from all the Stone Age villages. Rye also was unknown. Altogether 115 species of plants have been determined. It is evident that the nourishment of the dwellers in the pile works consisted of corn and wild fruits, of fish, and the flesh of wild and domestic animals. Doubtless, also, milk was an important article of their diet.
Much as still remains to be made out, respecting the men of the Stone period, the facts already ascertained, like a few strokes by a clever draughtsman, supply us with the elements of an outline sketch. Carrying our imagination back into the past, we see before us, on the low shores of the Danish Archipelago, a race of small men, with heavy, overhanging brows, round heads, and faces probably much like those
