This discovery was greatly talked of in the district, and led to such a lively search for the sites of lacustrine abodes that before the end of the year some half-dozen stations were identified in the Lake of Bienne alone, not to mention a much larger number in the adjacent lakes. Notwithstanding the difficulties under which these lacustrine investigations were conducted, as dredging or digging under several feet of water was both laborious and expensive, the number of objects collected by the Swiss antiquaries in those early years is astonishingly great, as evidence of which I have only to point to the collections of Col. Schwab and Professor Desor. It is often the case that antiquarian remains owe their discovery to the mere accident of agricultural operations, peat-cutting, drainage, etc. Such operations are, however, usually confined to small lakes and bogs. The idea of partially lowering the surface of the extensive sheets of water in the Jura valley, comprising the lakes of Bienne, Neuchâtel, and Morat, was too chimerical to be ever entertained in the interests of archæology. But what was inconceivable and utterly beyond hope from this point of view, became, in the interests of agriculture, not only a practical problem, but is now an accomplished fact. Between the lakes of Bienne, Neuchâtel, and Morat, there stretches a vast mossy district known as the "Gross Moos," through which the combined surplus water of the two latter lakes finds its way to the former. From the north end of Lake Bienne the surplus water again emerges, and is conveyed by the Zihl or Lower Thielle in a sluggish channel for some miles farther down the valley, where, before the Correction des Eaux du Jura, it united with the Aar. As the surface of these lakes is nearly on the same level, it is more than probable that in early prehistoric times their waters formed one united sheet, which in the course of ages became separated into three lakes by the interposition of the sedimentary and peaty deposits now forming the Gross Moos. Their connecting channels, the Broye and the Upper Thielle, owing to the sluggishness of the flow, became gradually raised by the constant deposition of mud, thus proportionately raising the level of the confined waters, and consequently rendering the surrounding lands more and more liable to submergence. Also, the river Aar, though passing quite in the vicinity of the lake of Bienne, went a long way beyond it before joining with the Zihl, and often caused great havoc by flooding the richly-cultivated lands of the lower grounds.