16 SUCCESSION OF TREES IN DANISH PEAT. cnAP. ii. 



the eyes, showing that the ancient race was of small stature, 

 with round heads and overhanging eyebrows, — in short, they 

 bore a considerable resemblance to the modern Laplanders. 

 The human skulls of the bronze age found in the Danish peat, 

 and those of the iron period, are of an elongated form and 

 larger size. There appear to be very few well-authenti- 

 cated examples of crania referable to the bronze period, — a 

 circumstance no doubt attributable to the custom prevalent 

 among the people of that era of burning their dead and 

 collecting their bones in funeral urns. 



No traces of grain of any sort have hitherto been discovered, 

 nor any other indication that the ancient peoj^le had any 

 knowledge of agriculture. The only vegetable remains in the 

 mounds are burnt pieces of wood and some charred substance 

 referred by Dr. Forchhammcr to the Zostera marina, a sea- 

 jilant which was perhaps used in the production of salt. 



What may be the antiquity of the earliest human remains 

 preserved in the Danish peat cannot be estimated in centuries 

 with any approach to accuracj^. In the first place, in going 

 back to the bronze age, w^e alreadj^ find ourselves bej^ond the 

 reach of history or even of tradition. In the time of the 

 Romans the Danish Isles were covered, as now, with magnifi- 

 cent beech forests. Nowhere in the world does this tree flou- 

 rish more luxuriantly than in Denmark, and eighteen centuries 

 seem to have done little or nothing towards modifying the cha- 

 racter of the forest vegetation. Yet in the antecedent bronze 

 period there were no beech-trees, or at most but a few stragglers, 

 the country being then covered with oak. In the age of stone, 

 again, the Scotch fir prevailed (see p. 9), and already there 

 were human inhabitants in those old pine forests. How many 

 generations of each species of tree flourished in succession 

 before the pine was supplanted by the oak, and the oak by 

 the beech, can be but vaguely conjectured, but the minimum 

 of time required for the formation of so much j-jcat must, ac- 



