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THE STONE-PERIOD.

bers of stone, which remain as lasting monuments of the energy and skill of the builders. It has, however, been supposed by some that the Fins, at the time they lived in Denmark, had fixed abodes, and that they first commenced their nomadic life, when they were driven by a newly invading and more powerful people, from the fertile southern part of Scandinavia, to the more northern parts, to the wild woody mountains of Sweden and Norway, which would account for the want of Cromlechs, in those countries. But it is evident that a people, who leave a country for the sake of defending their independence and nationality, neither give up their usual way of earning their livelihood, nor their old peculiar national customs; except when obliged to emigrate to a country where they are compelled to alter their mode of living because they cannot find the same means for subsistence, or when frequent attacks of their enemies will not allow them to settle quietly, and continue the observance of their religious customs, &c. Nothing of that kind could have happened to the Fins in going from the south, to the north of Scandinavia. Both Norway and Sweden have plenty of coasts, woods, and rivers, full of game and fish, which would afford to a fishing and hunting people, a most excellent opportunity for fixed abodes; perhaps even more so than Denmark. It must also be remarked, that it is said to have been the new invading people, in the bronze-period, who expelled the Fins from Denmark. But in Norway this new people do not seem to have settled, as there remain scarcely any monuments at all of them. In Norway, therefore, the Fins, after having been expelled from Denmark, could have settled quietly, and continued hunting and fishing, and burying their dead in Cromlechs and Giants' graves, after the manner of their forefathers, without being troubled by their enemies in Denmark.

It would nevertheless be a strong argument in favour of the Finnish origin of the Cromlechs, if, as some authors contend, the skulls and skeletons which are found in these graves, had exactly the same characteristic type, as the heads and cra-