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land, and particularly articles formed of flint, in the northern 
counties ; but in Denmark there occurs a greater number and 
variety of implements of flint, probably because that stone is ex- 
ceedingly common in that country. Most of these implements 
of stone seem to belong to a time before all history—to an 
aboriginal people, who lived by fishing and hunting upon the 
sea-coasts and along the large rivers of Europe. The tombs 
of these people give the best information on this point. There 
are in Ireland and England a number of stone structures 
called Cromlechs, Druidical altars, &c., which are generally 
regarded as religious monuments belonging to a historical 
time; but excavations in Ireland (in the Pheenix Park), in 
Jersey, Guernsey, and several other places, have shewn that 
they were tombs, containing skeletons, implements of stone or 
bone, vases of clay, and rude ornaments of amber and bone. 
Exactly similar monuments in Denmark and France contain, 
without fexception, the same objects, and, like the Irish 
and English cromlechs, they differ from all other tombs. 
They are only found on the coasts of the Baltic and the 
German ocean, in Holland, France, Portugal, and on the 
coasts of the Mediterranean, but never in the interior parts of 
Germany, Austria, or Hungary. There is every reason to 
believe that those remarkable monuments were raised by a 
people who had no metal, and therefore were unable to pe- 
netrate into the interior of Europe, which was then covered 
with forests and morasses of an immense extent. It is only 
through a careful examination and comparison of the skeletons 
andjskulls found in the tumuli just mentioned, that we can 
get information concerning the races to which this aboriginal 
people belonged. ‘This discovery of a stone period, in the 
history of Europe, was the first important result arrived at 
by the study of antiquities alone. 
§ 2. The Bronze Period. 
Mr. Worsaae remarked further, that, in looking over 
