Such machines are not absolutely new to archæology, and the little that is known about them rather strengthens the opinion above given as to their use. The first discovered to which attention was directed in archæological journals was figured and described in 1873[32] by Dr. Hildebrandt, of Tribsees, Neu-Vorpommern. It measures 29½ inches long, and 6 inches broad at the ends, and has two movable valves in the centre. It was found in a peat bog at a depth of 5 to 6 feet below the surface, and is now preserved in the Museum at Greifswald. Dr. Hildebrandt conjectured that it was some kind of trap for catching fish. In reply to Dr. Hildebrandt's notice of the machine found at Tribsees, Professor F. Merkel, of Rostock, wrote to say[33] that two similar ones were found in different parts of North Germany, which he considered to be otter traps rather than fish traps. One of them was found in the moor of Samow, near Gnoien, at a depth of 6 or 7 feet, and is now in the Museum at Rostock. [Illustration: =Fig. 47.=--Wooden machine, 3 feet long, from North Germany.] It is remarkably like the one from Laibach, and differs only in being 4 inches longer, and having three holes in the valves instead of two (=Fig. 47=). A third[34] was found in a moor at Friedrichsbruch, near Flatow, in the province of West Preussen, which was sent to the Märkisches Museum. At no time within historical times were such machines known to be in use, so that their function still remains conjectural, unless the circumstantial evidence derived from the Pfahlbau at Laibach decides them to be "Biberfälle." While the proofs of the above remarks were still in my hands, I received from Dr. Luigi Meschinelli, of the Geological Museum of the Royal University of Naples, a copy of an article by him, entitled "Studio Sugli Avanzi Preistorici della Valle di Fontega."[35] The objects described in this memoir were found, in the course of excavating peat, in a small valley which opens into Lake Fimon in the vicinity of Vicenza. Among numerous industrial remains of man, consisting of fragments of pottery, various implements of stone and flint, a bronze celt, and a Roman coin of the time of the Emperor Adrian, were three curious and novel objects of wood shaped like small canoes. One of these machines--the best preserved, though not the largest--is carefully described and figured by Dr. Meschinelli, and from his minute description there can be no doubt it is another example of the same apparatus which I have just described as having been found in North Germany and Laibach Moor. [Illustration: =Fig. 47=_a_.--Wooden machine from FONTEGA, 28 inches long, with detached valves, and some worked sticks found along with it.]