As for the buildings themselves, or huts of the Neolithic people, we know but little. They were probably built much the same as the houses in the lake settlements. We meet with some strange modifications in England. Frequently within these ramparts we find circular pits or depressions in the ground. They are regarded as vestiges of habitations, and they must have been mainly under ground. “They occur singly and in groups, and are carried down to a depth of from seven to ten feet through the superficial gravel into the chalk, each pit, or cluster of pits, having a circular shaft for an entrance. At the bottom they vary from five to seven feet in diameter, and gradually narrow to two and a half or three feet in diameter in the upper part. The floors were of chalk, sometimes raised in the center, and the roof had been formed of interlaced sticks, coated with clay imperfectly burned.”15 In the north of Scotland, instead of putting them under ground, they built them on the natural surface, and then built a mound over them all. In appearance this was scarcely distinguishable from a mound, but on digging in we discover a series of large chambers, built generally with stones of considerable size, and converging toward the center, where an opening appears to have been left for light and ventilation. In some instances the mound was omitted, and we have simply a cluster of joining huts, with dry, thick walls. These have been appropriately named “Bee-hive Houses.”16 We can form a very good idea of Neolithic Europe from what we have learned as to their habitations. A well-wooded country, abounding in lakes and marshes, quite thickly settled, but by a savage people, divided into many tribes, independent of and hostile to each other. The lakes were fringed with their peculiar settlements; they are to be noticed in the marshes, and on commanding heights are still others. The people were largely hunters and fishers, but, as we shall soon see, they practised a rude husbandry and had a few domestic animals. Such was the condition of Europe long before the Greek and Latin tribes lit the beacon fires of civilization in the south. It is evident that the builders of the lake settlements and the fortified villages were an intelligent and industrious people, though their scale in civilization was yet low. Their various implements of bone, horn, and stone display considerable advance over the rude articles of the Drift. Neolithic Axes.