has been found at Moosseedorf. The almost universal absence of this quadruped is supposed to imply that the Swiss lake-dwellers were prevented from eating that animal by the same superstition which now prevails among the Laplanders, and which Julius Cæsar found in full force amongst the ancient Britons.[1]
That the lake-dwellers should have fed so largely on the fox, while they abstained from touching the hare, establishes, says Rütimeyer, a singular contrast between their tastes and ours.
Even in the earliest settlements, as already hinted, several domesticated animals occur, namely, the ox, sheep, goat, and dog. Of the three last, each was represented by one race only; but there were two races of cattle, the most common being of small size, and called by Rütimeyer Bos brachyceros (Bos longifrons Owen), or the marsh cow, the other derived from the wild bull; though, as no skull has yet been discovered, this identification is not so certain as could be wished. It is, however, beyond question that at a later era, namely, towards the close of the stone and beginning of the bronze period, the lake-dwellers had succeeded in taming that formidable brute the Bos primigenius, the Urus of Cæsar, which he described as very fierce, swift, and strong, and scarcely inferior to the elephant in size. In a tame state its bones were some what less massive and heavy, and its horns were somewhat smaller than in wild individuals. Still in its domesticated form, it rivalled in dimensions the largest living cattle, those of Friesland, in North Holland, for example. When most abundant, as at Concise on the Lake of Neufchatel, it had nearly superseded the smaller race, Bos brachyceros, and was accompanied there for a short time by a third bovine variety, called Bos trochoceros, an Italian race, supposed to
- ↑ Commentaries, lib. v. ch. 12.
