REVIEWS—GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES OF MAN'S ANTIQUITY. 387 
Urus: and the latter, it is well known, survived to within a compara- 
tively recent epoch. Although of ancient date, therefore, as proved 
by the changes in the surrounding physical conditions which must 
have taken place since their accumulation, they belong to a less remote 
period than the gravel beds of Amiens and other localities alluded to 
in an earlier part of this notice. In the peat-bogs of Denmark, we 
find evidences of a still more recent origin, coupled, however, with facts 
which shew how vast must have been the lapse of time between even 
these latest records, and the earliest known days of northern history. 
The three successive periods of stone, bronze, and iron, are clearly re- 
vealed in these peat accumulations as in those of many other countries, 
‘But each of these periods in Denmark was accompanied by a special 
forest-vegetation of its own: and in this lies the chief interest of the 
Danish peat-bogs—the physical changes which these so clearly indi- 
cate, being in themselves an undeniable record of the long periods 
‘which must have elapsed since the tirst stone implement became im- 
bedded in the peat-morass. The lower beds, a few feet in thickness, 
‘rest in hollows on the surface of Drift deposits, and contain, with flint 
‘knives and other implements of stone, numerous trunks of trees, some 
three feet in diameter, belonging chiefly to the Pinus sylvestris or 
Scotch Fir. This tree has never been seen in Denmark within histor- 
‘ical times, except here and there as an introduced species; and the 
‘climate at present is quite unsuited to its growth. The succeeding 
‘peat-beds contain two varieties of the oak, now almost extinct within 
‘the Danish Isles; and mixed with these, more especially towards the 
‘upper part of the deposit, hatchets and other implements of copper 
and bronze have been found. Finally, in the highest stratum of the 
peat, the oak trunks are replaced by stems of the common beech, the 
tree of which the present forests of Denmark are chiefly composed.— 
** In the time of the Romans ’”—writes Sir Charles Lyell—“ the Dan- 
ish Isles were covered, as now, with magnificent beech forests. No- 
where in the world does this tree flourish more luxuriantly than in 
Denmark ; and eighteen centuries seem to have done little or nothing 
towards modifying the character 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, and already there were hu- 
man inhabitants in those old pine forests. How many generations of 
each species of tree flourished in succession before the pine was sup- 
