Notwithstanding a minute search, no traces of any kind of corn have hitherto come to light; but we must not therefore conclude that the lake-dwellers were ignorant of agriculture and the ordinary cereals, as grain is so apt to decompose unless it happens to be in a carbonised state. It is, however, probable that the cultivation of grain was not the chief industry of the colony, and that the mealing-stones which were in such abundance must have been used for grinding some other kind of food as well as grain, such as the kernels of hazel-nuts and water-chestnuts. The water-chestnut (_Trapa natans_), according to Deschmann, does not grow at the present time in Carniola; nor has it ever, since the earliest botanical examination of the country by Scopoli, been considered a native plant in the _Flora Carniolica_. In the last century the monks of the Cistercian order, at Sittich, cultivated it in their ponds. Pliny, however, distinctly states that in ancient times it was used as a food. "Thraces qui ad Strymona habitant foliis tribuli equos saginant, ipsi nucleo vivunt, panem facientes prædulcem, et qui contrabit ventrem." (H. Nat., xxii. 10-12.) Among the vast quantity of osseous remains there is not a single fragment of the skeleton of the horse. On the other hand, it is calculated that the deer is represented by no less than 500 individuals, and the beaver by at least 140. For the latter this is a colossal figure, seeing that the richest station in beaver remains among the Swiss lake-dwellings, viz. Moosseedorfsee, numbers only eight individuals. The animal is now extinct in the country, nor has it ever been mentioned in any of the historical annals of Carniola. FOOTNOTES: [21] _Das Ausland_, 1884, p. 479; _Antiqua_, 1884, p. 70. [22] _Antiqua_, 1885, p. 1. [23] _Corr.-Blatt_, vol. xv. p. 55. [24] _Antiqua_, 1884, p. 140. [25] _Antiqua_, 1883, p. 14; and _ibid._, 1885, p. 2. [26] _Matériaux_, vol. xvii. p. 321. [27] _Vereins für Vater. Naturkunde_, Stuttgart, 1878, p. 95. [28] "Kupferzeit in Europa," p. 9. [29] _Mitt. Anth. Ges. Wien_, vol. xv. p. 120. [30] Pigorini, B. 298_e_; Virchow, B. 293; Mestorf, "Der Intern. Anthrop. und Arch. Cong. in Buda-Pesth." [31] _Mitt. des Hist. Vereins für Krain_, October and November, 1864. [32] _Zeit. für Eth._, vol. v., _Verhand._, p. 119. [33] _Zeit. für Eth._, vol. vi., _Verhand._, p. 180, 1874. [34] _Ibid._, vol. ix., _Verhand._, p. 168. [35] _Atti della Soc. Veneto Trentina di Sc. Nat._, vol. xi., 1889. [36] Dr. Meschinelli, in reply to my observations on the Laibach machine, the advanced proofs of which I sent to him, rejects the _beaver-trap_ theory as a possible explanation of the use of the Fontega machines, but suggests that they might have been used as traps for catching wild-fowl. (B. 469.) Third Lecture. LAKE-DWELLINGS AND PILE-STRUCTURES IN ITALY.