84 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
IV. The " KjoJcJcen-Moddingeif'' ofDenmarJc, and their Similitudes on the 
Elginshire Coast. By the Rev. George Gordon, LL.D., Minister of 
Birnie. Communicated by George Logan, Esq., W.S. (Illustrative 
Specimens of the different Shells were Exhibited.) 
Kjokken-Moddinger is a Danish word applied to masses 
of the remains, chiefly of edible shell-fish, found around the 
shores of Denmark. When literally given in English it 
comes to be a well-known and homely term, which is pro- 
bably iiot very different in sound from the original. In 
Denmark these masses have been long known, but were 
little regarded by the archseologist, and at times spoken of 
by the geologist as shells left by the sea when the land 
was more deeply immerged in the ocean than it is at pre- 
sent. Within the last few years it has been ascertained 
that these collections of shells are the dust-heaps made up 
of the debris of the food on which the earlier inhabitants of 
that territory subsisted, and closer examination of their 
contents has thrown light on the manners and customs of 
those rude tribes who first settled on the shores of Scan- 
dinavia. 
Kjokken-Moddinger are by no means rare along our own 
shores. Several of them have been compared with the de- 
scription given of those in Denmark, and they are found to 
agree in many striking particulars. They are most likely 
to be found all round the British coasts. The object of the 
present notice is to invite attention to some facts, which, if 
well worked out by such as have the opportunity, will tend 
to show how the earlier occupiers of Morayland lived and 
fared. This end will be best advanced by those who take 
an interest in the subject making known any locality where 
shell-heaps have been met with similar to those which are 
here to be enumerated. 
From two papers, one by Mr Lubbock in the " Natural 
History Keview" for October 1861 ; the other by Mr Nor- 
man, published by Macmillan and Company, it appears that 
the people, of whose means of living these shell-heaps are 
the vestiges, existed in Denmark in what is known in anti- 
quarian works as the Stone Age, or that earliest period of 
