356 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [April 8, 



whose detached bones occur in the ancient drift or diluvium of many 

 countries of Europe as well as in Siberia (where it is the associate 

 of the mammoth and the Rhinoceros tichorhinus), but also as exhi- 

 biting upon the vertebral column a perforation, which Nilsson has no 

 doubt was inflicted by the stone head of a javelin thrown by one of 

 the aboriginal human inhabitants of Scania. By whatever instru- 

 ment inflicted, this wound has its largest orifice on the anterior face 

 of the first lumbar vertebra, and, diminishing gradually in size, has 

 penetrated the second lumbar vertebra, and has even slightly in- 

 jured the third. Occupying himself for many years in collecting 

 all the utensils of the aborigines of his country and in studying their 

 uses. Professor Nilsson shows, that the orifice in the vertebrae of 

 the specimen oi Bos primigenius in question is so exactly fitted by 

 one of the stone-headed javelins found in the neighbourhood, that 

 no reasonable doubt can be entertained that the wound was inflicted 

 by a human being. He does not think that this wound was mortal, 

 but, on the contrary, he indicates (from the manner in which the 

 bone seems to have afterwards cemented) that the creature lived 

 two or three years after the infliction of a wound produced by the 

 hurling of a javelin horizontally in the direction of the head, but 

 that missing the head it passed between the horns and impinged on 

 this projecting portion of the back. 



It is not my intention to enter further at present upon the sub- 

 ject of the terrestrial remains of Scania, and I will only say that 

 Professor Nilsson thinks he has discovered good proof of the exist- 

 ence of bogs, containing these land animals and also aflFording in- 

 dependent proofs of the co-existence of man, which have since been 

 submerged and covered by gravel and sand, and also that the pre- 

 sent land is there still undergoing subsidence*. On the other hand. 

 Professor Forchharamer contends that there is no proof whatever of 

 this progressive subsidence in Scania, not even in the celebrated case 

 of the town of Tralleborg, cited by various authorities from the time 

 of Linnaeus to our own days, and seen and referred to by Mr. Lyell. 

 I have alluded to this fact of the occurrence of great land animals, 

 some of which are now extinct, in the bogs of Scania (presenting 

 a parallel case with our Cervus megaceros now buried in the bogs 

 of Ireland), because the phaenomenon is of great importance in 

 reference to the superficial deposits of Sweden generally, in no 

 other part of which has a trace of such remains been found, and 

 where, as we shall see, all the evidences indicate a continuous sub- 

 marine condition, from periods of very remote antiquity to the ex- 

 isting epoch. 



Advancing to the north and east from the lower grounds of Sca- 

 nia, the surface of the more elevated portions of this province affords 

 convincing proof, that the drift of materials from the north has 

 taken linear directions, or has been arranged in great trainees. 

 The Osar or gravelly longitudinal zones which occupy such large 

 parts of the centre and north of Sweden, are not however typi- 



* See Lyell, Phil. Trans. 1835, p. 5. 



