e building there was a hearth made of slabs of
stone.

The people who inhabited these structures belonged either to the later
Stone Age, or the Bronze Age, as we learn from the relics which their
huts disclose. In the earlier ones are found celts, flint flakes,
arrow-heads, harpoons of stag's horn with barbs, awls, needles, chisels,
and fish-hooks made of bone, and sometimes wooden combs, and skates made
out of the leg-bone of a horse. Besides the remains of the usual
domestic animals we find bones of the beaver, bear, elk, and bison.

When the use of bronze was discovered the people still lived on in their
lake dwellings. Fire often played havoc with the wooden wattle walls;
hence we frequently find a succession of platforms. The first dwelling
having been destroyed by flames, a second one was subsequently
constructed; and this having shared the same fate, another platform with
improved huts was raised upon the ruins of its predecessors. The relics
of each habitation show that, as time went on, the pit dwellers advanced
in civilisation, and increased the comforts and conveniences of life.

Some of the dwellings of these early peoples belong to the Bronze Age,
as do those of the Auvernier settlement in the Lake of Neuchatel; and
these huts are rich in the relics of their former inhabitants. At Marin
on the same lake the lake dwellers were evidently workers in iron; and
the relics, which contain large spear-heads, shields, horse furniture,
fibulas, and other ornaments, together with Roman coins, prove that they
belonged to the period of which history tells us.

I have described at length these Swiss lake dwellings, although they do
not belong to the antiquities of our villages in England, because much
the same kind of habitations existed in our country, though few have
as yet been unearthed. Possibly under the peaty soil of some ancient
river-bed, or old mere, long ago drained, you may be fortunate enough
to meet with the remains of similar structures here in England. At
Glastonbury a few years ago a lake village was discovered, which has
created no small stir in the antiquarian world, and merits a brief
description. Nothing was known of its existence previously; and this is
an instance of the delightful surprises which explorers have in store
for them, when they ransack the buried treasure-house of the earth,
and reveal the relics which have been so long stored there.

All that met the eyes of the diggers was a seri