356 KJOKKEN-MODDING. CHAP. xvn. 



refuse heaps, have been discovered in large numbers 

 along the shores of the Danish islands. Not less 

 than a hundred and fifty have already been found in 

 Denmark. They consist chiefly of castaway shells, 

 of the oyster, mussel, cockle, and periwinkle, 

 intermixed with the bones of quadrupeds, birds, and 

 fish. Some of them also contain fragments of pottery 

 and burnt clay, and rude implements of stone and 

 bone, which have evidently been dropped by those 

 who took their meals in the vicinity of the heaps, or 

 who have thrown them away as useless. 



These shell-mounds vary in height, in breadth, 

 and in length. They are from three to ten feet high, 

 and sometimes extend to a thousand feet in length, 

 while they vary from a hundred to two hundred 

 feet in width. It is evident, from these remains, 

 that some pre-historic people were accustomed to 

 live along the sea-shore, or to frequent it when food 

 failed them in the interior, and live upon molluscs 

 and fish. That they ventured out to sea in canoes 

 hollowed out of the trunk of a single tree (such as 

 are occasionally found in Danish peat-bogs) is ob- 

 vious, from the fact that the bony, relics of deep- 

 sea fish, such as the cod, the herring, and the skate, 

 are occasionally found in the shell-heaps. No remains 

 of any agricultural produce, nor of domesticated 

 animals (excepting the dog), have been found in 

 ' them ; so that it is probable that the people who 

 then occupied the land, were exclusively hunters and 



