Note 1687 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

This branch of archæological science began, I believe, with the discovery by Sir Wm. R. Wilde of some lacustrine habitations in a small lake in county Meath. R. Monro’s Ancient Scotch lake Dwellings (Edinburgh, 1882) has gathered what is known of the remains in Great Britain. There are similar remains in various parts of the continent of Europe; but those revealed by the dry season of 1853-54 in the Swiss lakes have attracted the most notice. Dr. Keller described them in Reports made to the Archæological Society of Zurich. A. Morlot printed an abstract of Keller’s Report in the Smithsonian Report, 1863. In 1866, J. E. Lee arranged Keller’s material systematically, and translated it in The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and other parts of Europe, by Ferdinand Keller (London, 1866), which was reissued, enlarged and brought down to date, in a second edition in 1878. The earliest elaborated account was Prof. Troyon’s Habitations lacustres (1860), of which there was a translation in the Smithsonian Reports, 1860, 1861. Troyon and Keller have reached different conclusions: the one believing that the traces of development in the remains indicate new peoples coming in, while Keller holds these to be signs of the progress of the same people. A paper by Edouard Desor, Palafittes or Lacustrian Constructions, appeared in English in the Smithsonian Report, 1865. There is a large collection of typical relics from these lake dwellings in the Peabody Museum (Report, v.).