Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/31

Rh of the antiquity of the mounds, viz., that they are wanting on those parts of the coast which border the Western Ocean, or exactly where the waves are now slowly eating away the land. There is every reason to presume that originally there were stations along the coast of the German Ocean as well as that of the Baltic, but by the gradual undermining of the cliffs they have all been swept away. Another striking proof, perhaps the most conclusive of all, that the 'refuse-heaps' are very old, is derived from the character of their embedded shells. These consist entirely of living species; but, in the first place, the common eatable oyster is among them, attaining its full size, whereas the same Ostrea edulis cannot live at present in the brackish waters of the Baltic except near its entrance, where, when ever a north-westerly gale prevails, a current setting in from the ocean pours in a great body of salt water. Yet it seems that during the whole time of the accumulation of the 'shell-mounds' the oyster flourished in places from which it is now excluded. In like manner the eatable cockle, mussel, and periwinkle (Cardium edule, Mytilus edulis, and Littorina littorea), which are met with in great numbers in the 'refuse-heaps,' are of the ordinary dimensions which they acquire in the ocean, whereas the same species now living in the adjoining parts of the Baltic only attain a third of their natural size, being stunted and dwarfed in their growth by the quantity of fresh water poured by rivers into that inland sea. Hence we may confidently infer that in the days of the aboriginal hunters and fishers, the ocean had freer access than now to the Baltic, communicating probably through the peninsula of Jutland, Jutland having been at no remote period an archipelago. Even in the course of the present century, the salt waters