42 Dr J. W. Dawson on the Antiquity of Man. 



Danish antiquaries, respecting certain remains in heaps of 

 oyster-shells found on the Danish coast (which appear to 

 be precisely similar to those heaps accumulated by the 

 American Indians on our coasts from Prince Edward Island 

 to Georgia) ; and respecting similar remains found in peat 

 bogs in that country. These remains show three distinct 

 stages of unrecorded human history in Denmark : — Ist^ A 

 stone period, when the inhabitants were small-sized men, 

 brachykephalous or short-headed, like the modern Lapps, 

 using stone implements, and subsisting by hunting. Then 

 the country, or a considerable part of it, was covered by 

 forests of Scotch fir (Finns sylvestris). 2d, A bronze period, 

 in which implements of bronze as well as of stone were 

 used, and the skulls of the people w^ere larger and longer 

 than in the previous period ; wdiile the country seems to 

 have been covered with forests of oak {Quercus Rohur). 

 3(i, An iron period, which lasted to the historic times, and 

 in which beech forests replaced those of oak. All of these 

 remains are geologically recent ; and except the changes in 

 the forests, and of some indigenous animals in consequence, 

 and probably a slight elevation of some parts of Denmark, 

 no material changes in organic or inorganic nature have 

 occurred. 



The Danish antiquaries have attempted to calculate the 

 age of the oldest of these deposits, by considerations based 

 on the growth of peat and the succession of trees, but these 

 calculations are obviously unreliable. The first forest of 

 pines would, when it attained maturity, naturally be de- 

 stroyed, as usually happens in America, by forest conflagra- 

 tions. It might perish in this way in a single summer. 

 The second growth which succeeded would in America be 

 birch, poplar, and similar trees, which would form a new 

 and tall forest in half a century ; and in two or three cen- 

 turies would probably be succeeded by a second permanent 

 forest, which, in the present case, seems to have been of 

 oak.* This would be of longer continuance, and would, 

 independently of human agency, only be replaced by beech, 



* The details of this process, as it occurs in America, will be found noticed 

 in a paper by the writer in the " Edinburgh Pliilosophical Journal" for 1847. 

 Such changes are couatanily in progress in the American forests. 



