It may be some time yet before further research will throw much additional light on the appearances and discoveries above recorded, but should they turn out to be the genuine remains of ancient lake habitations, it is more than probable that they will be found to be no exceptional instances, but remnants of a more widely distributed custom. Meantime, however, they appear to me sufficiently suggestive, especially when taken together with the evidence I have already produced as to the prevalence of such structures amongst the Celtic races in Scotland and Ireland, and the distinct statement made by Julius Cæsar that the Britons made use of wooden piles and marshes in their mode of entrenchment (_sylvis paludibusque munitum_), to entertain the hypothesis that the original British Celts, from whom in all probability have descended the modern Gaels, were an offshoot of the founders of the Swiss Lake-Dwellings, that they emigrated to Britain when these lacustrine abodes were in full vogue, and that, as they spread northwards and westwards over Scotland and Ireland, they retained, and probably practised, the habit of resorting to insular protection long after the custom had fallen into desuetude in Europe. As, however, the lake-dwelling mania subsided and gradually came to a close on the Continent, subsequent immigrants into Britain, such as the Belgæ, Angles, etc., being no longer acquainted with the subject, cultivated new principles of defensive warfare, or, at any rate, ceased to resort to the protection afforded by the artificial construction of lake-dwellings, whilst the first Celtic invaders, still imbued with their primary civilisation, when harassed by enemies and obliged to act on the defensive, had recourse to their peculiar and inherited system of protection, with such variations and improvements as better implements and the topographical requirements of the country suggested to them. Hence it would follow that the range of the British Lake-Dwellings, both in space and time, would vary according to circumstances and the vicissitudes of their founders; but, speaking generally, it is only reasonable to suppose that its limitation first commenced in those districts most accessible to fresh swarms of Continental immigrants. But this problem, as well as many other subsidiary questions which follow in the same line of inquiry, must be solved by further researches; and should these remarks in any way lead to renewed application in this department, they will serve a good end, whatever may be the result of the hypothesis thus broached regarding the primary sources of the ideas that led to the development of British Lake-Dwellings. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 53: _Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society_, vol. xii. p. 255, May 7, 1856.] [Footnote 54: _Lake-Dwellings_, by Keller (2d ed., trans. by Lee), p. 660.] APPENDIX. ADDITIONAL DISCOVERIES ON THE CRANNOG IN LOCHSPOUTS.