g in communities or villages. We need not picture to
ourselves a country dotted with houses, the abodes of single families;
such did not exist, but here and there were fortified villages.

Still another consequence follows from this tribal state of society.
There was no such thing as a strong central government. Each tribe
obeyed its own chief, and a state of war nearly always existed between
different tribes. Such we know was the state of things among the Indian
tribes of America. Travelers tell us that it is so to-day in Africa.
Each tribe stood ready to defend itself or to make war on its neighbors.
One great point, therefore, in constructing a village, was to secure a
place that could be easily defended.

Bearing these principles in mind, let us see what we can learn of their
habitations. Owing to a protracted drouth, the water in the Swiss lakes
was unusually low in the Winter of 1854, and the inhabitants of Meilen,
on the Lake Zurich, took advantage of this state of affairs to throw up
embankments some distance out from the old shore, and thus gain a strip
of land along the coast. In carrying out this design, they found in the
mud at the bottom of the lake a number of piles, some thrown down and
others upright, fragments of rough pottery, bone and stone instruments,
and various other relics.

Dr. Keller, president of the Zurich Antiquarian Society, was apprised of
this discovery, and proceeded at once to examine the collection made and
the place of discovery. He was not long in determining the prehistoric
nature of the relics, and the true intent of the pile remains. He proved
them to be supports for platforms, on which were erected rude dwellings,
the platforms being above the surface of the water, and at some distance
from the shore, with which they were connected by a narrow bridge.

Illustration of Lake Village, Switzerland.-------------

This was the first of a series of many interesting discoveries from
which we have learned many facts as to Neolithic, times. The out we have
introduced is an ideal restoration of one of these Swiss lake villages.
It needs but a glance to show how admirably placed it was for purposes
of defense. Unless an enemy was provided with boats, the only way of
approach was over the bridge. But the very fact that they resorted to
lakes, where at the expense of great labor they erected their villages,
is a striking illustration of the insecurity of the times.

This discovery onc