Wild fruits and berries formed a considerable portion of the food of the earliest lacustrine peoples; and, from certain indications which have been brought to our notice, we have reason to believe that several varieties of trees were the objects of their intelligent culture; in short, that they were cultivated in orchards and gardens. The settlement of Robenhausen on the Lake of Pfæffikon, has furnished us with the most valuable information on this point. The lacustrine villages of Wangen (Lake of Constance), and Concise (Lake of Neuchâtel) have also been the scenes of curious discoveries. In all of these settlements a large number of charred apples have been met with, cut in two, and sometimes four pieces, and evidently stored up for the winter. These apples are no larger than walnuts, and in many of the Swiss forests a species of apple still exists which appears to be the same sort as those found in the lacustrine settlements. Pears have been discovered only in the settlement of Wangen; they were cut up and dried just like the apples. In the mud of the lakes, stones of the wild plum and the bird-cherry, or Sainte-Lucie plum, were found; also the seeds of blackberries and raspberries, the shells of beech-nuts and hazel-nuts, and several species of the water-chestnut, which is now only to be met with at two points of the Swiss Alps. We must also add that M. Gilliéron collected in the settlement of the Isle of Saint-Pierre, oats, peas, lentils, and acorns, the latter evidently having been intended for the food of swine. This discovery is an important one, because oats had, hitherto, never been met with anywhere. We shall complete this list of names by enumerating the other vegetables which have been ascertained to have existed in the lake settlements, the berries and seeds of some of which were used as food, &c. They are the strawberry, the beech, the yew, the dog-rose, which is found in hedges, the white and yellow water-lily, the rush, and the forest and the marsh pine. There are no traces of the vine, rye, or hemp. Fig. 207, representing _the cultivation of gardens during the bronze epoch_, is intended to sum up and delineate materially all the ideas we have previously suggested concerning the agricultural and horticultural knowledge possessed by man during the bronze epoch. A gardener is tilling the ground with a horn pick-axe, a representation of which we have previously given. Others are gathering fruit from trees which have been planted and cultivated with a view of increasing the stock of food. [Illustration: Fig 207.--The Cultivation of Gardens during the Bronze Epoch.] The sheep and oxen which may be noticed in this figure indicate the domestication of these animals and of their having been reared as tame cattle. The dog, the faithful companion of man, could scarcely have been omitted in this assemblage of the auxiliary or domestic animals of the bronze epoch.