Page:Natural History Review (1861).djvu/506

494 Under these circumstances a committee was formed, consisting of Professor Steenstrup, the celebrated author of the treatise "On the Alternation of Generations," Professor Forchhammer, the father of Danish Geology, and Professor Worsäae, the great Archæologist: a happy combination, and one which promised the best results to Biology, Geology, and Archæology.

Much was naturally expected from the labours of such a triumvirate, but the most sanguine hopes have been fulfilled. Already several of the deposits have been carefully examined, and many thousand specimens have been collected, ticketed, and deposited in the Museum at Copenhagen. Both in themselves and in their relations to the discoveries made by M. Boucher de Perthes in the Valley of the Somme, these researches are of the greatest interest, and the results have been embodied in six Reports presented to the Academy of Sciences at Copenhagen.

These reports, however, being in Danish have not received the attention they deserve, but M. Morlot has published a very excellent abstract of them, to which I would refer all those who take an interest in the subject, and from which I have extracted many of the following details. Having had the advantage of visiting the pits at Amiens and Abbeville with Mr. Busk, Capt. Galton, and Mr. Prestwich, and of inspecting the admirable collection belonging to M. Boucher de Perthes, I was naturally very desirous of having an opportunity of comparing the flint instruments found in France with those which occur in Denmark, and I was so fortunate as to induce Mr. Busk to go with me to Copenhagen, he being specially anxious to study the collection of ancient crania, while my attention was more particularly directed to the contents of the Kjökkenmöddings. During the whole of our visit Prof. Worsäae was absent from the capital, and Prof. Forchhammer was also away for a great part of the time; Professors Thomsen and Steenstrup however were most obliging, and the latter at much personal inconvenience made an excursion into the country to show us the Kjökkenmödding, at Havelse, on the Isefjord, which is one of the most characteristic specimens of these ancient dust-heaps. We had already visited one at Bilidt, close to Fredericksund, but this is one of the places at which it would seem that the inhabitants cooked their dinners actually on the shore itself, so that the shells and bones are much mixed up with sand and gravel. At Havelse, on the contrary, the settlement was rather higher up, and the shells and bones are therefore unmixed with any extraneous substances. We started from Copenhagen soon after six, going to Röeskilde by rail, and then took the steamer down the Isefjord to Fredericksund, from which we drove to Havelse. At this place the Kjökkenmödding is of small extent, and appears to have