The " Kjokhen-Moddinger' of Elginshire. 85 
civilisation, if it can be so reckoned, in which men knew 
not the use of metals, and consequently had to form all the 
implements they employed out of flint or bone. The dust- 
heaps of Northern Europe are assigned to this most distant 
era from the presence in and around them of implements 
formed from such materials, and from the entire absence of 
anything forged of bronze, or worked out of iron— metals 
that characterise and give name to the two succeeding 
periods of antiquity. Mr Lubbock says of the Stone period, 
that, in Denmark at least, "men seem to have been exclu- 
sively hunters and fishermen. With the Bronze Age we 
find evidences of a pastoral and agricultural life. It is pro- 
bable that the men of the Stone period were conquered, and 
partly replaced, by a more civilised race coming from the 
East. It is not only the introduction of bronze and do- 
mestic animals which point to such a conclusion. The new 
people burned their dead, and collected the bones in funeral 
urns." In the earlier or Stone period, the bodies of the dead 
seem not to have been so consumed, " for the tombs of this 
(the Stone) period are chambers formed by enormous blocks 
of stone, that it is difiicult to imagine how they can have 
been brought into position. The bodies were placed in a 
sitting posture, with their backs resting against the stones, 
and their knees brought up under their chins." This most 
ancient known period of human life in Northern Europe 
has been subdivided into two portions of time — the first 
indicated by the comparative rudeness or roughness of the 
stone implements ; the second, by the fine polish superin- 
duced on them as art advanced. The Kjokken- Moddinger 
are referred to the second. The remoteness of that period 
can now only be guessed at. 
A very singular clue or illustration has been discovered, 
and is thus described by the authors referred to. In 
digging down through the mosses, or peat bogs, of Denmark, 
four distinct and successive layers have been passed. The 
lowest, or that lying on the surface of the earth, consists of 
peaty matter only, and contains nothing showing any trace 
of art, or of the hand of man. The second ascending layer 
is full of grown pines (Scots firs), which have flourished 
