is as completely choked up with trees as if they were artificially arranged in it.
At the lower part of the deposit, immediately above the peat, the trees are all pines, (Pinus sylvestris). They attain a diameter of three feet, and their magnificent size proves how well the country was at that time adapted to their wants, while the proportion of their length to their diameter shows that they were "drawn up" by growing close to one another, though for a long while pines have ceased to grow naturally in Denmark. As we rise nearer to the surface of the peat we find them gradually replaced by oaks, while these latter are succeeded by beeches. No antiquities are found in the lowest amorphous peat, but stone weapons are found amongst the pines: an interesting fact, when coupled with the presence in the "Kjökkenmöddings" of the Tetrao urogallus, whose food consists mainly of pine buds.
Articles of bronze have not been found below the oaks: while iron occurs only among the beeches. Thus we find in Denmark three great periods of arborescent vegetation, corresponding to the three great stages of civilization: the Stone period, with the pine forests; the Bronze age with the oaks; and finally, the great beech woods, which must have been already the most striking feature of the country, even before the introduction of iron, as we know that they have continued to be ever since
It is a question whether the Kjökkenmöddings were not more ancient than the period previously known as the Stone age: and whether, therefore, this earliest age ought not to be subdivided. Certain it is that the Kjökkenmöddings have not yet yielded any of the carefully formed axes and knives, but these weapons were evidently the result of toilsome and skilful workmanship, and we should not expect to find the choicest works of art in a modern dustheap. On the other hand, the barrows of the stone period in which the more elaborate weapons are found, have not yet supplied us with the small and rude axes which occur in the Kjökkenmöddings, but the fact is that, in all probability, these would, until the last few years, have attracted no attention and been overlooked, so that it remains to be ascertained whether, now that their interest is acknowledged, they will not be found, and it is stated that some barrows recently opened have contained rude, as well as well worked, weapons. But even if they should hereafter prove to be absent, still the fact would not be conclusive, as probably only the chiefs and their families were buried in the great barrows, and in this case it might well be argued that the best weapons only would be buried with them.
Possibly it will hereafter be ascertained that while in the older tumuli of the Stone period, weapons of the best workmanship only were deposited, the later ones contain also ruder and less perfect specimens. There is indeed evidence that, even at this early period, religious institutions and customs, at first full of earnest meaning tended to degenerate into mere forms. In the earliest times the
