316 THE VEGETATION OF DENMARK. 



pride of the country, and, as far as tradition goes, they have 

 always been so. But, as is shown by the peat-bogs, this is a 

 mistake. The large mosses do not help us very much in this 

 matter, but there are, in many of the forests, small and deep 

 depressions, filled with peat, and called skov-mose. These, 

 as might naturally be expected, contain many trees which 

 grew on their edges, and at length fell into them. At the 

 bottom is usually an amorphous peat, above is a layer of 

 pines a tree which does not now grow naturally in Den- 

 mark. Higher up the pines disappear, and are replaced by 

 oaks, and white birches, neither of which are now common 

 in Denmark; while the upper layer consists principally of 

 the Betula verrucosa, and corresponds to the present, which 

 we may call the Beech, period. Professor Steenstrup has 

 found stone implements among the stems of the pines, 

 and as the capercailzie, which feeds on the young shoots of 

 the pine, has been found in the Kjokkenmoddings, it seems 

 likely, to say the least, that these shell- mounds belonged to 

 the Pine period, and that the three great stages of civilisa- 

 tion correspond in some measure with these three periods of 

 arborescent vegetation. For one species of tree thus to dis- 

 place another, and in its turn to be supplanted by a third, 

 would evidently require a great lapse of time, but one which, 

 as yet, we have no means of measuring. 



Turning now from Denmark to Switzerland, there are two 

 cases in which a more definite estimate has been attempted. 

 We must not, indeed, place too much reliance on them as 

 yet, but if many calculations made on different data shall 

 agree in the main, we may at length come to some approxi- 

 mate conclusion. 



The first of these calculations we owe to M. Morlot. The 

 torrent of the Tiniere, at the point where it falls into the Lake 

 of Geneva, near Villeneuve, has gradually built up a cone of 

 gravel and alluvium. In the formation of the railway this 



