86 Proceedings of the Boyal Physical Society. 



and faded until the soil got sick of them. Among these 

 firs the first indication of humanity is to be met with in the 

 shape of weapons and implements formed out of flint and 

 the harder stones. Along with them there are remains of 

 the capercailzie or cock-of-the-wood. Above this we have the 

 third layer, which is composed of oaks ; and in it articles 

 made of bronze first appear. When the oaks exhausted all 

 the pabulum in the soil suited for their support, they seem 

 to have given way to the beech forests, which are, at this 

 date, one of the most striking features- of Denmark. Among 

 the beech, or in the highest layer of all, iron instruments 

 occur. Thus, as Mr Lubbock writes, " while one race of 

 men have exterminated another, and has in its turn been 

 supplanted by a third, great changes in the vegetation have 

 also taken place. It is manifestly impossible to affix a date 

 in years to the formation of the Kjokken-Moddinger, which 

 nevertheless are of immense antiquity. We have seen that 

 at the time of the Eomans the country was, as now, covered 

 by beech forests, and yet we know that during the Bronze 

 Age beeches were absent, or only represented by a few 

 stragglers, while the whole country was covered by oaks. 

 This change implies a great lapse of time, even if we sup- 

 pose that but a few generations of oaks succeeded one 

 another. We know also that oaks had been preceded by 

 pines, and that the country was inhabited even then." 



On our own sandy shores and gravelly beeches of Elgin- 

 shire, somewhat inland, and raised above the level of the 

 highest tides, most people in their sea-side saunterings must 

 have come upon masses of whitened and decayed shells, at 

 times several yards in circumference, and some feet in depth. 

 On passing these heaps, the reflection or remark may have 

 arisen that the marine animals had been left to die there by 

 the receding waters, or that, after the death of their inhabi- 

 tants, the shells had been collected at some early period by 

 an eddy of the ocean. Such oversight, or mistake, may 

 possibly have been committed even by the scientific ob- 

 server. It would be of importance, therefore, that, after 

 the knowledge that has been got of these Kjokken-Mod- 

 dinger, some of those localities around the British shores 



