CHAP. VIIL] THE SHELL-MOUNDS OF DENMARK. 303 



culture on the shores of the Baltic far below the general 

 level of that of Switzerland and Europe in the Neo- 

 lithic age. Vast accumulations of shells and bones of 

 fishes, birds, and animals, close to the sea-shore mark 

 the sites of ancient encampments, which were occupied 

 during at least two-thirds of the year, and were no mere 

 resting-places for nomad hunters. Oysters, cockles, 

 mussels, and periwinkles formed the principal shell-fish 

 which were eaten; and the herring, cod, dorse, eel, 

 and flounder, the principal fishes. The shell-fish, Sir 

 Charles Lyell remarks, are of the usual dimensions to 

 which they arrive in the open sea, and not stunted as they 

 are now in the Baltic ; from which it may be inferred that 

 the Baltic was more closely connected with the ocean 

 than at present, and not so brackish at the time of these 

 accumulations as it is now. The cod and the herring 

 also are deep-sea fishes, and are not likely to have been 

 caught without the use of coracles or canoes. 



Among the birds, the great auk (Alca impennis), 

 now extinct in Europe, and fast becoming exterminated 

 in Greenland, is the most abundantly represented in the 

 refuse-heaps. There are also wild ducks, geese, wild 

 swans, and capercailzies. The last of these feeds princi- 

 pally on the buds of the pines, and consequently it may 

 be inferred from its presence that at this time the coun- 

 try was covered with dense forests of pine, or the earliest 

 of the three great forest-growths which are shown by 

 the discoveries in the peat-bogs to have occurred in the 

 following order : 



4 ed. c. vii. Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 4th ed. p. 1 2. Worsaae, La Colonisa- 

 tion de la Russie et du Nord Scandinave. Mem. Soc. Roy. des Antiq. du. 

 Nord, 1873-4 ; transl. par E. Beauvois, 1875. Copenhague. 



