12 DANISH SHELL-MOUNDS, CHAP. ii. 



islands, mounds may be seen, consisting chiefly of thousands 

 of cast-away shells of the oyster, cockle, and other mollusks 

 of the same species as those which are now eaten by man. 

 These shells are plentifully mixed up with the bones of 

 various quadrupeds, birds, and fish, which served as the food 

 of the rude hunters and fishers by whom the mounds were 

 accumulated. I have seen similar large heaps of oysters, 

 and other marine shells, with interspersed stone implements, 

 near the sea-shore, both in Massachusetts and in Georgia, 

 U.S., left by the native North American Indians at points 

 near to which they were in the habit of pitching their wig- 

 wams for centuries before the white man arrived. 



Such accumulations are called by the Danes Kjokken- 

 modding, or "kitchen-refuse-heaps." Scattered all through 

 them are flint knives, hatchets, and other instruments of 

 stone, horn, wood, and bone, Avith fragments of coarse jjottery, 

 mixed with charcoal and cinders, but never any implements 

 of bronze, still less of iron. The stone hatchets and knives 

 had been sharpened by rubbing, and in this resj^ect are one 

 degree less rude than those of an older date, associated in 

 Prance with the bones of extinct mammalia, of which more 

 in the sequel. The mounds vary in height from 3 to 10 feet, 

 and in area are some of them 1000 feet long, and from 150 

 to 200 wide. They are rarely placed more than 10 feet 

 above the level of the sea, and are confined to its immediate 

 neighborhood, or, if not (and there are cases where thej^ are 

 several miles from the shore), the distance is aseribable to the 

 entrance of a small stream, which has deposited sediment, or 

 to the growth of a peaty swamp, by Avhich the land has been 

 made to advance on the Baltic, as it is still doing in many 

 places, aided, according to M. Puggaard, by a very slow up- 

 heaval of the whole country at the rate of two or three inches 

 iin a century. 



There is also another geographical fact equally in favor 



