In addition to the peat-mosses, another class of memorials found in
Denmark has thrown light on the pre-historical age. At certain
points along the shores of nearly all the Danish islands, mounds
may be seen, consisting chiefly of thousands of cast-away shells of
the oyster, cockle, and other molluscs of the same species as those
which are now eaten by Man. These shells are plentifully mixed up
with the bones of various quadrupeds, birds, and fish, which served
as the food of the rude hunters and fishers by whom the mounds were
accumulated. I have seen similar large heaps of oysters, and other
marine shells with interspersed stone implements, near the
seashore, both in Massachusetts and in Georgia, U.S.A., left by the
native North American Indians at points near to which they were in
the habit of pitching their wigwams for centuries before the white
man arrived.

Such accumulations are called by the Danes, Kjokkenmodding, or
"kitchen-middens." Scattered all through them are flint knives,
hatchets, and other instruments of stone, horn, wood, and bone,
with fragments of coarse pottery, mixed with charcoal and cinders,
but never any implements of bronze, still less of iron. The stone
hatchets and knives had been sharpened by rubbing, and in this
respect are one degree less rude than those of an older date,
associated in France with the bones of extinct mammalia, of which
more in the sequel. The mounds vary in height from 3 to 10 feet,
and in area are some of them 1000 feet long, and from 150 to 200
wide. They are rarely placed more than 10 feet above the level of
the sea, and are confined to its immediate neighbourhood, or if not
(and there are cases where they are several miles from the shore),
the distance is ascribable to the entrance of a small stream, which