"Before the Romans, long before the Etruscans, there lived in the plains of northern Italy a people to whom the cross was a religious symbol, the sign beneath which they laid their dead to rest; a people of whom history tells nothing, knowing not their name, but of whom antiquarian research has learned this, that they lived in ignorance of the laws of civilisation, that they dwelt in villages built on platforms over lakes, and that they trusted in the cross to guard, and may be to revive their loved ones whom they committed to the dust. Throughout Emilia are found remains of these people; these remains form quarries whence manure is dug by the peasants of the present day. These quarries go by the name of _terramares_. They are vast accumulations of cinders, charcoal, bones, fragments of pottery, and other remains of human industry. As this earth is very rich in phosphates it is much appreciated by agriculturists as a dressing for their land. In these _terramares_ there are no human bones. The fragments of earthenware belong to articles of domestic use; with them are found querns, moulds for metal, portions of cabin floors, and great quantities of kitchen refuse. They are deposits analogous to those which have been discovered in Denmark and Switzerland. The metal discovered in the majority of these _terramares_ is bronze; the remains belong to three distinct ages. In the first none of the fictile ware was turned on the wheel or fire-baked. Sometimes these deposits exhibit an advance of civilisation. Iron came into use, and with it the potter's wheel was discovered, and the earthenware was put in the furnace. When in the same quarry these two epochs are found, the remains of the second age are always superposed over those of the bronze age. A third period is occasionally met with, but only occasionally; a period when a rude art introduced itself, and representatives of animals or human beings adorned the pottery. Among the remains of this period is found the first trace of money, rude little bronze fragments without shape.