Fig. 47.—Wooden machine, 3 feet long, from North Germany.
It is remarkably like the one from Laibach, and differs only in being 4 inches longer, and having three holes in the valves instead of two ([Fig. 47]). A third[34] was found in a moor at Friedrichsbruch, near Flatow, in the province of West Preussen, which was sent to the Märkisches Museum. At no time within historical times were such machines known to be in use, so that their function still remains conjectural, unless the circumstantial evidence derived from the Pfahlbau at Laibach decides them to be "Biberfälle."
While the proofs of the above remarks were still in my hands, I received from Dr. Luigi Meschinelli, of the Geological Museum of the Royal University of Naples, a copy of an article by him, entitled "Studio Sugli Avanzi Preistorici della Valle di Fontega."[35] The objects described in this memoir were found, in the course of excavating peat, in a small valley which opens into Lake Fimon in the vicinity of Vicenza. Among numerous industrial remains of man, consisting of fragments of pottery, various implements of stone and flint, a bronze celt, and a Roman coin of the time of the Emperor Adrian, were three curious and novel objects of wood shaped like small canoes. One of these machines—the best preserved, though not the largest—is carefully described and figured by Dr. Meschinelli, and from his minute description there can be no doubt it is another example of the same apparatus which I have just described as having been found in North Germany and Laibach Moor.
Fig. 47a.—Wooden machine from Fontega, 28 inches long, with detached valves, and some worked sticks found along with it.
The body of the Italian machine was constructed out of one piece of oak, and measured 28 inches long, 6¾ inches broad, and 2¾ inches thick ([Fig. 47a]). The opening in the centre, which was closed by two valves revolving on projecting pivots, and resting along their axis in a deep groove cut on each side of the machine, measured 6½ inches by 3½ inches on the under side, so that this would be the actual size of the aperture when the valves were open. Associated with the machine, as will be seen from the illustration, were several worked portions of sticks, evidently the débris of some kind of mechanism attached to it. Similar sticks were found along with the Laibach examples. It will be observed that the dimensions of the Italian one are a little less than those of the previously described machines, but that in all other respects they are identical. The other two found at Fontega were, according to Dr. Meschinelli, precisely similar to the one he describes.
Among the organic remains from these peat excavations I find no mention made of the osseous remains of the beaver, neither is this animal included by Lioy among the fauna of the lake-dwellings at Fimon. So far, therefore, there is no presumptive evidence that the machines described by Dr. Meschinelli were beaver-traps. That, however, the beaver frequented the Po valley during prehistoric times we have positive evidence in the discovery of its bones in several localities—as, for example, the terremare of Castellaccio (B. 457) and Cogozzo (B. 389a).
Puzzled to account for these curious machines which so fortunately attracted the attention of Dr. Meschinelli, he concludes his notice of them thus:—