discovery of copper tools and ornaments of a peculiar form in the
Danubian provinces, bears witness to a distinct civilization in those
districts, and confirms what we have just said about a Copper age.

From the Lake Stations of Austria and Hungary, we pass naturally to
those of Switzerland. We shall have to introduce to our readers whole
villages built in the midst of the waters, and a people long completely
forgotten. In many of these stations, none but stone implements have
been found, and on the half-burnt piles on which the huts had been set
up, it is still easy to make out the notches cut with flint hatchets.

We meet with similar pile dwellings, as these structures are called,
in France, Italy, Germany, Ireland, and England, for from the earliest
times man was constantly engaged in sanguinary contests with his
fellowmen, and sought in the midst of the waters a refuge from the
ever present dangers surrounding him.

The discoveries made in Belgium must be ranked amongst the most
important in Europe, and we shall often have occasion to refer to
them. Holland, on the other hand, having much of it been under the sea
for so long, yields nothing to our researches but a few arrow-heads,
hatchets, and knives made of quartz or diorite, and all of them of
the coarsest workmanship.

No less fruitful in results to prehistoric science are the researches
made in the south of Europe. The congress that met at Bologna, in 1871,
showed us that in the Transalpine provinces man was witness of those
physical phenomena which gave to Italy its present configuration;
and the exhibition in connection with the congress enabled us to get
a good idea of the primitive industry which has left relics behind