520 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1924 



scientific identification. This is a far better plan than the English 

 one, according to which the lightkeepers merely forward a report on 

 the birds that have been found. Denmark has the honor of being 

 the only country where these researches are carried on regularly. 

 They have yielded very important results, especially in the form 

 of highly interesting information about the traveling of the migra- 

 tory birds. In this connection I should like to mention that Winge 

 gave, in the work "Danmarks Natur" ("Frem," 1897-1899), an ex- 

 ceedingly beautiful and vivid description of the arrival and de- 

 parture of migratory birds, a description which has, with perfect 

 justice, been introduced into the Danish reading books of the 

 schools. 



In connection with these bird reports I shall only just mention 

 his revision of the birds and mammals of Greenland for the "Con- 

 spectus Faunae Groenlandicae " and his book on Danish mammals 

 in "Danmarks Fauna." We may now pass to another main sec- 

 tion of Winge's life work: His researches on bones and skeletal 

 remains from the kitchen middens of the Stone Age, and from the 

 graves of the Bronze Age, upon the whole all the remains of birds 

 and mammals from prehistoric times collected by our archeologists 

 and geologists. These researches were of the greatest importance. 

 It was through Winge's researches that we received the first decisive 

 proofs of the fact that the Stone Age comprises two different periods, 

 the older and the younger, the people of the older Stone Age being 

 hunters, those of the younger Stone Age resident agriculturists who 

 kept domestic animals. It is a truly enormous amount of material — 

 hundreds of thousands of bone fragments — that Winge went over 

 and identified with quite a phenomenal certainty; and we are in- 

 voluntarily seized with admiration for the man who was able to 

 carry through this immensely great and difficult work. Also neigh- 

 boring countries, both Sweden, Norway, and Finland, applied to 

 Winge for help in similar work, and he was always ready to give 

 his assistance. It is thus not only the zoologists, but to an equally 

 high degree the geologists and archeologists who have reason to re- 

 member Winge with the deepest gratitude. 



After the completion of all these works — " E Museo Lundii," the 

 works on the birds and the researches on the bone remnants from 

 prehistoric times, it was Winge's purpose to sum up the results 

 of his studies of mammals in a great, comprehensive account of all 

 mammals and their mutual relationships. It was his intention that 

 this work should be, as it were, his scientific testament. * * * j^ 

 became so, alas, in a more direct meaning than he had probably imag- 

 ined, as he died before it was finished. He just lived to send out 

 Volume I ; Volume II was in print ; and the concluding Volume III, 



