44 CURIOUS CREATURES. 



assisted by a few tasteless berries, and fungi. Nor are 

 they exempt from famine, and, as a consequence, canni- 

 balism accompanied by parricide." 



This I believe to be as faithful a picture as can be 

 drawn of the makers of the shell mounds. 



But in Denmark, although shells formed by far the 

 major part of these middens, yet they ate other fish, 

 the herring, dorse, dab, and eel. Birds also were not 

 despised by them, bones of swallows, the sparrow, 

 stork, capercailzie, ducks, geese, wild swans, and even 

 of the great auk (now extinct) have been found. Then 

 of beasts they ate the stag, roe-deer, wild boar, urus, 

 dog, fox, wolf, marten, otter, lynx, wild cat, hedgehog, 

 bear, and mouse ; beside which they lived on the seal, 

 porpoise, and water rat. 



Owing to the almost total absence of polished imple- 

 ments and yet the fact being that portions of one or 

 two have been found the makers of these kjokkenmodd- 

 ings, are classed as belonging to the later Palaeolithic 

 period. 



Of the Bronze and Iron Ages there is no necessity 

 to write, men were emerging from their primaeval 

 barbarity and all the gentle arts, though undeveloped, 

 were nascent. Men who could smelt metals, and mould, 

 and forge them, cannot be considered as utter barbarians, 

 such as were the long-headed men, with their chipped 

 flint implements and weapons. 



WILD MEN. 



Sometimes a specimen of humanity has got astray in 

 infancy, and has been dragged up somehow in the woods, 



