42 CURIOUS CREATURES. 



fish, 1 that did not live together, and that they were either 

 full-grown, or nearly so. A stricter examination was 

 made, and the result was the finding of some flint 

 implements, and bones marked by knives, conclusively 

 showing that man had had a hand in this collection of 

 shells and the conclusion was come to that these 

 were the sites of villages of a prehistoric man, a 

 hypothesis which was fully borne out by the discovery, 

 in some of them, of hearths bearing traces of having 

 borne fire. Thus, then, these refuse heaps were clearly 

 the work of a very ancient race, so poor, and back- 

 ward, as to be obliged to live on shell-fish and these 

 mounds were made by the shells which they threw 

 away. 



We can find a very great analogy between them and 

 the Tierra del Fuegans, when Darwin visited them, 

 while with the surveying ships Adventure and Beagle, 

 a voyage which took from 1832 to 1836; and, when we 

 read the following extracts from Darwin's account of the 

 expedition, we can fancy we have before us a vivid 

 picture of the makers of the kitchen middens. " The 

 inhabitants, living chiefly upon shell-fish, are obliged 

 constantly to change their place of residence ; but they 

 return at intervals to the same spots, as is evident from 

 the pile of old shells, which must often amount to some 

 tons in weight. These heaps can be distinguished at a 

 long distance by the bright green colour of certain plants 

 which invariably grow on them. . . . The Fuegian 

 wigwam resembles, in size and dimensions, a haycock. 

 It merely consists of a few broken branches stuck in the 

 ground, and very imperfectly thatched on one side, with 

 a few tufts of grass and rushes. The whole cannot be 



1 The most abundant were the oyster, mussel, cockle, and periwinkle. 



