It is certain that lake dwellings were used as places of permanent abode. Remains of such works of ancient date are, on the continent of Europe, by no means confined to the area of Switzerland, to which country they were for some time popularly supposed to belong exclusively; they have been found in Savoy, in the north of Italy, Würtemberg, Bavaria, Austria (Carinthia), Hungary, Mecklenburg, Denmark, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and also in France. If dependence can be placed on remains found in these numerous and widely-distributed sites, many of them would appear to have been occupied so late as the period of the Romans; and the silence of their historians on the subject is therefore singular, as in general the characteristic traits of the tribes with which the Roman legions came in contact were depicted with remarkable fidelity. In Switzerland, during the year 1829, an excavation was made on the shore at Ober Meilen, on the lake of Zurich, for the purpose of deepening the harbour; and although piles and other antiquities were then discovered, they appear to have attracted no attention. So matters stood till the winter of 1853-4, when an extraordinary drought and long-continued frost caused the lakes to sink to a level never before known. This circumstance presented great facilities for the reclamation of land along the shores, and the inhabitants of Ober Meilen proceeded to rescue from the water some of the land thus temporarily exposed. When making excavations to form an embankment, they came upon a net-work of wooden piles, a great number of stags’ horns, and various implements, only two of which were of bronze. The discovery of this settlement aroused peculiar interest, not merely on account of its being apparently the first recorded, but because it evidently belonged almost exclusively to the stone age. Similar structures were immediately after discovered in almost all the lakes of Switzerland, the favourite site being a sunny sheltered bay, with soft and gently-shelving bottom. They were of three classes--first, _pile dwellings_: the piles, sometimes 30 feet in length, were driven into the bottom of the lake, and occasionally further strengthened by the deposit of stones around their base: these constructions always occur in deep water. Secondly, _frame pile dwellings_, in which the piles, instead of being driven into the mud, were fixed by a mortise and tenon arrangement into split trunks lying horizontally along the bottom of the lake. Thirdly, _fascine dwellings_, formed by layers of fagots, alternating with brushwood, clay, gravel, and stones, one over the other, till the top reached the required level above the surface of the water; piles were driven in around to bind the heap together, and the whole overlaid by a wooden floor, upon which the dwellings were erected. [Illustration: Fig. 1.--Sketch Section of Swiss Pile Dwelling.]