The objects of special interest collected were fragments of coarse pottery, made, however, on the wheel, and particularly some vessels made of _potstone_; a large stone splinter, showing marks of usage; a bronze ring, and some iron slag. In 1883 Pigorini recurs to the remains at Fontanellato (B. 408) and explains that, owing to the great progress made in the investigations of the terramara deposits, and the additional light thrown on the subject, he has come to the conclusion that the station at Fontanellato was not a direct continuation of the terramara system which prevailed in the Bronze Age, but a "palafitta barbarica," in which he sees the practical evidence of the incursions, into the Po valley many centuries later, of the northern hordes of barbarians which gave the final _coup_ to the Roman empire. That these people were conversant with such structures there is ample evidence in the analogous remains of terpen in Holland, the burgwälle and lake-dwellings of Germany, the Tószeg and other mounds in Hungary, etc. (B. 410b.) Nor does the station at Fontanellato stand as an isolated example of these later structures. Chierici found one at Marmirolo, in the district of Reggio.[42] Another is recorded by Cornalia,[43] and Pigorini thinks that several other stations which have been more or less described belong to the same class as those in the Thrasimene district[44] and that at Offida, near Piceno. (B. 343.) With these exceptions, there are no terramara mounds of the Iron Age, and the system is supposed to have flourished in the early Bronze Age and to have fallen completely into desuetude before the commencement of the Iron Age. FOOTNOTES: [37] _Atti della Soc. It. di Sc. Nat._, vol. ii. p. 177. [38] So called by the Congress of Italian Naturalists who met here in 1878, after Virginia Ponti, wife of the proprietor. [39] _Atti della Soc. It. di Sc. Nat._, vol. ii. [40] B. 90, and _Giornale dell' Ing. Arch. ed Agri._, an. xii. [41] Brizio, "La Grotta del Farnè." [42] _Bul. Palet. It._, 1883, p. 17. [43] _Atti della Soc. It. di Sc. Nat._, vol. vii. [44] Brizio, "La Grotta del Farnè," p. 45. Fourth Lecture. SPECIAL CHARACTER OF THE REMAINS FOUND AT LA TÈNE AND IN LAKE PALADRU: LACUSTRINE AND MARINE DWELLINGS IN THE LOWER RHINE DISTRICT AND NORTH GERMANY. LA TÈNE.