500 ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 



Stone period, the facts already ascertained, like a few strokes by a 

 clever draughtsman, supply ns with the elements of an outline sketch. 

 Carrying our imagination back into the past, we see before us on the 

 low shores of the Danish Archipelago a race of small men, with heavy 

 overhanging brows, round heads, and faces probably much like those 

 of the present Laplanders. As they must evidently have had some 

 protection from the weather, it is most probable that they lived iu 

 tents made of skins. The total absence of metal from the Kjokken- 

 moddings proves that they had not yet any weapons except those made 

 of wood, stones, horns, and bones. Their principal food consisted of 

 shell-fish, but they were able to catch fish, and often varied their diet 

 by game caught in hunting. It is, perhaps, not uncharitable to con- 

 clude that, when then hunters were unusually successful, the whole 

 community gorged itself with food, as is the case with many savage 

 races at the present time. It is evident that marrow was considered 

 a great delicacy, and every single bone which contained any was split 

 open in the manner best adapted to extract the precious morsel. 



The remains of the wild swan, which is only a winter visitor, and 

 the state in which some of the deer-horns are found, prove that we 

 have not here to do with mere summer quarters, and render it highly 

 probable that the inhabitants resided on these spots all the year 

 round, except, indeed, when obliged to move in search of shellfish, as 

 is the case even now with the Euegians, whose mode of life (Darwin's 

 Journal, p. 234), gives us a vivid and probably correct idea of what 

 was passing on the shores of the Danish fjords several thousand 

 years ago. 



If the absence of cereal remains justifies us, as it appears to do, 

 in concluding that they had no knowledge of agriculture, they must 

 certainly have sometimes suffered from periods of great scarcity, 

 though, on the other hand, they were blessed in the ignorance of 

 spirituous liquors, and saved thereby from what is at present the 

 greatest scourge of Northern Europe. 



"While one race of men has thus exterminated another, and has in 

 its turn been supplanted by a third, great changes in the vegetation 

 have also taken place. At present the beech woods are the pride of 

 the country, and are considered by the Danes to be the finest in the 

 world. Many of the trees are of great size, and the forests are popu- 

 larly supposed to have existed from time immemorial. This, however, 

 is a mistake, as is proved by the trees found in the peatbogs. Some 

 of these bogs, which are known in Denmark under the name of 

 Skovmose, are small and deep depressions which have been gradually 

 filled up by the growth of peat, and by the trunks of trees which 

 grew on the edge and fell into the hollow. The lowest portion of 

 the deposit consists, however, entirely of peat, and it is only in the 

 upper part that the tree stems are found. It was at first supposed 

 that these were blown down by the wind, but it has been observed 

 that their heads always lie towards the centre of the moss. When 

 this latter is of small diameter, it sometimes happens that the stems 

 from one side cross those from the other, and the whole depression 





