OF NEW ENGLAND. SFI 
Iù Denmark, such methods applied to the Kjækkenmæd- 
dings, or refuse-heaps, have yielded results of great im- 
portance to archæology, and have shown that some of 
these heaps at least, as in Seeland along the Isefjord, date 
back to a period when their geological surroundings were 
Somewhat different from what they now are, when the 
shores were less raised above the sea, and the oysters, of 
the shells of which the heaps are made up, had not yet . 
retreated to where the fresher waters of the Baltic, at the 
present time, mingle with the ocean in the Kategatt. 
The shell-heaps we have here described yield nothing 
which indicates as high an antiquity as those of the old 
world. The materials of them present some variety in 
the degree of decomposition which has resulted from time 
and exposure, the lower layers being much more disin- 
tegrated and friable, the shells in fact falling to pieces, 
while those of the upper ones generally preserve their 
original firmness. That there was a difference in time in 
which these layers were deposited, is further indicated by 
the fact, that, in two of the heaps, a stratum of earth is in- 
terposed between the earlier and later deposits, as if the 
locality had been abandoned as a camping place, and then 
after a prolonged absence of the natives had been reoccu- 
pied. Each heap, too, is covered with a deposit of earth 
and vegetable mould, of variable thickness, and in some 
cases, as at Frenchman’s Bay, supporting a growth of 
forest trees, though these were nowhere of such size as to 
indicate that they had lived a century. Mr. Morse has 
called attention to the abundance of Helices, or land 
Snails, which were exhumed at Crouch’s Cove, and to the 
fact that these require a hard-wood growth for subsist- 
“ence, while at present the island, on which this cove is 
situated, is covered with spruces. It is also noticeable 
