500 



ENCLOSING OF FOSSILS IN PEAT, 



[Ch. XLIV. 



a^-e of bronze instruments 



even in great part to the 



tecedent Neolithic Stone Period, of which more will be 



said in Chapter XLYII. 



According to De Luc, the very site of the aboriginal forests 

 of Hercinia, Semana, Ardennes, and several others, are now 

 occupied by mosses and fens. A great part of these changes 

 have with much probability, been attributed to the strict 

 orders given by Severus, and other emperors, to destroy all 

 the wood in the conquered provinces. So also many of the 



mosses 



periods, by order of the En 

 harboured wolves or outlaws. 



parliament, I 

 IS the Welsh 



many 



Henry II., to prevent the natives from 



harbouring in them, and harassin 



It is a remarkable fact that in the Danish islands, and in 

 Jutland as well as in Holstein, trunks of the Scotch fir, Finns 

 sylvestrisy are found at the bottom of the peat-mosses, al- 

 though this species of fir has not been a native of the same 

 countries in historical times, and, when introduced there, has 

 not thriven. Hig^her up in the Danish peat-mosses, prostrate 



common 



at a still higher level, the pedunculated variety of the same 

 oak, Quercus rohuVy Linn., is met with, together with the 

 alder, birch, and hazel. The oak has now in its turn been 

 almost supplanted in Denmark by the common beech. There 

 appears therefore to have been a natural rotation of trees, 

 whether owing to the exhaustion of the soil, or a change of 

 climate in Denmark ; one set of species, which hved on the 

 borders of the swamps, having died out and another sue- 



ceeded. 



them 



tlie 



remains oi man 



the fundamental peat in which the Scotch firs lie buried, a 

 a flint implement has been taken out, by Steenstrup hims( 

 from below one of the buried pines. It was a weapon of 



the later Stone Period or ISTeolithic 



Age 



•no remains 



of 



Paleolithic Man having as yet been discovered in any part 

 of Scandinavia."^ 



^:- Lubbock, introduction to Nilsson on the Stone Age, 1S68. 



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I 



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