thern lakes large tropical shells two thousand
miles from their native habitat. The ancient inhabitants of China and
India found at a very early period that they possessed in their jade
rocks a very valuable material, in exchange for which they could get
what they wanted from the Western races; while these Western races had
at least one article which they could barter for the much-prized jade
implements, viz. linen cloth, the weaving of which was practised in
the oldest settlements, hanks of unspun flax and thread, nets and
cloth of the same material having been found not unfrequently in the
lake dwellings.

What an interesting glimpse into the far-off past does this link of
connection between the East and the West give us! It indicates a
degree of civilisation which we are not accustomed to associate with
these primeval times. Archaeologists are of opinion that the race who
inhabited Central Europe during the earlier part of the stone age were
akin to the modern Laplanders. The people of the lake dwellings,
however, and especially those who used jade implements, who replaced
them, were a superior and more civilised race. The evidence of the
articles which they used, with the exception of jade itself, points
not to an Asiatic origin, but rather to a connection with the shores
on both sides of the Mediterranean. When they migrated northwards they
brought with them the flax and the cereals of Egypt, and introduced
with them the southern weeds which grew among these cultivated plants.
The seeds of the catch-fly of Crete, which does not grow in
Switzerland or Germany, have been found among the relics of the
earliest of the lake dwellings; while the familiar corn blue-bottle
of our autumn fields was first brought from its native Sicily by this
lacustrine people in whose cultivated fields it grew as a weed, and by
them spread over all Western and Northern Europe. Such are the
interesting associations and profound problems connected with the
material of the martyr weights. And it is unique in this respect, that
it meets us as far back as the first traces of neolithic man in
Central Europe--nay, farther back still, in the palaeolithic flints
found in the caves near Mentone; and that it is still used in the
countries where it is found for a great variety of useful and
ornamental purposes, idols being carved out of it, and altars adorned
with its semi-transparent olive-green slabs. The inhabitants of the
South Sea Islands until