168 FOSSIL MEN. 



monuments of America scarcely think them deserving 

 of mention.* It must, however, be confessed that 

 American writers also, taken by the infection wafted 

 from the Eastern Continent, have sometimes allowed 

 their fancy in such matters to get the better of their 

 judgment. 



In Scandinavia, Prof . Steenstrup deserves great credit 

 for the constancy with which he has maintained the 

 identity of age between the shell-heaps, or Kjokken 

 moddings, of the coast, and the inland tumuli of the 

 Stone age, though the one contain scarcely anything 

 else than rude implements, useful in opening shells, 

 and the others well-formed implements of polished 

 stone. He has shown conclusively that even a few 

 exceptional implements of the latter class found in 

 the shell-heaps are enough to redeem them from the 

 imputation of being the deposits of an earlier and 

 ruder people. 



Even among hunting tribes, culture and the arts 

 are not wholly dormant. In the ancient Acadia f the 

 immense abundance of deer, water-fowl, and fish, 

 enabled the Micmac to live in plenty on the produce 

 of fishery and the chase, each season having its ap- 

 propriate animal, while the rocky character of many 

 parts of the country was not favourable to agriculture. 



* This has been markedly shown in the attempts which 

 have been made to assign the deposits of different caves in the 

 valley of the Vezere, in France, to widely separated ages, and 

 in the foregone conclusion that the rude implements of the 

 river gravels indicate a very barbarous people. 



f Now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. 



