Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/331

] culture on the shores of the Baltic far below the general level of that of Switzerland and Europe in the Neolithic age. Vast accumulations of shells and bones of fishes, birds, and animals, close to the sea-shore mark the sites of ancient encampments, which were occupied during at least two-thirds of the year, and were no mere resting-places for nomad hunters. Oysters, cockles, mussels, and periwinkles formed the principal shell-fish which were eaten; and the herring, cod, dorse, eel, and flounder, the principal fishes. The shell-fish, Sir Charles Lyell remarks, are of the usual dimensions to which they arrive in the open sea, and not stunted as they are now in the Baltic; from which it may be inferred that the Baltic was more closely connected with the ocean than at present, and not so brackish at the time of these accumulations as it is now. The cod and the herring also are deep-sea fishes, and are not likely to have been caught without the use of coracles or canoes.

Among the birds, the great auk (Alca impennis), now extinct in Europe, and fast becoming exterminated in Greenland, is the most abundantly represented in the refuse-heaps. There are also wild ducks, geese, wild swans, and capercailzies. The last of these feeds principally on the buds of the pines, and consequently it may be inferred from its presence that at this time the country was covered with dense forests of pine, or the earliest of the three great forest-growths which are shown by the discoveries in the peat-bogs to have occurred in the following order:—