The swords have larger handles and are more richly ornamented; the knives have straight edges; the sickles are larger; the pottery is more skilfully made and is ornamented with various colours; the personal ornaments are also more varied, and glass for the first time makes its appearance.
Col. Schwab has found at the Steinberg more than twenty crescents, made of earthenware, and with the convex side flattened, to serve as a foot. They are compressed at the sides, sometimes plain, sometimes ornamented, from eight to twelve inches from one horn to the other, and from six to eight inches in height. They are considered by Dr. Keller to be religious emblems, and are taken as evidence of moon-worship. He refers to Pliny, xvi. 95; "Est autem id (viscum) rarum admodum inventu et repertum magna religione petitur et ante omnia sexta luna, quæ principia mensum annorumque his facit, et sæculi post tricesimum annum, quia jam virium abunde habeat nec sit sui dimidia; omnia sanantem appelantes suo vocabulo." This passage he translates as follows: "The misletoe is however very rare, but when it is found it is gathered with great religious ceremony, especially on the sixth day of the moon, at which epoch begin their months, years, and divisions of thirty years, because it has then sufficient force, and yet is not in the middle of its course; calling it Healall in their language." This name has generally been referred to the misletoe. (See The Celt, Roman and Saxon, p. 48.) But the Swiss archæologists consider that this is a mistake, and that it properly refers to the moon.
A field of battle at Tiefenau, near Berne, is remarkable for the great number of iron weapons and implements which have been found on it. Pieces of chariots, about a hundred swords, pieces of coat of mail, lance heads, rings, fibulæ, ornaments, utensils, pieces of pottery and of glass, accompanied by more than thirty pieces of Gaulish and Massaliote money anterior to our era, enable us to refer this battlefield to the Roman era.
After this period we find no more evidences of Lake habitations on a large scale. Here and there indeed a few fishermen may have lingered on the half-destroyed platforms, but the wants and habits of the people had changed, and the age of Pileworks was at an end.
We have, however, traced them through the Stone and Bronze down to the beginning of the Iron period. We have seen evidences of a gradual progress m civilization, and improvement in the arts, an increase in the domestic animals, and proof at last of the existence of an extended commerce. We found the country inhabited only by rude savages and we leave it the seat of a powerful nation. Changes so important as these are not effected in a day; the progress of the human mind is but slow; and the gradual additions to human knowledge and power, like the rings in trees, enable us to form some idea how distant must be the date of their commencement. So varied however are the conditions of the human mind, so much are all nations affected by the influence of others, that when we attempt to
