Chambers's journal of popular literature, science, and art, fifth series, no. 131, vol. III, July 3, 1886

No. 131.—Vol. III.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, JULY 3, 1886.
The early history of man in every country is shrouded in considerable mystery and uncertainty. Of our own history, we have fairly full and accurate knowledge as far back as the days of the Saxon kings; but beyond that period, the light of history gradually fades into tradition. In seeking to follow the earlier history, even the light of tradition soon fails us, and we are left in complete darkness. The history of some other countries reaches further into the gloom of the past. But even Greece and Egypt have their dim dawn of history, beyond which the voice of massive ancient Sphinx and temple-ruins of the one are silent, and the beautiful myths of the other have no further record. When, however, tradition fails us, we have not by any means reached the farthest point in the history of the race. At that point, geology comes to our assistance with revelations of men of the rudest stage of life living in prehistoric ages under circumstances of great interest. It is to this early age of which geology speaks, that we here turn attention.
The peat-mosses of Denmark supply important data for the early history of man in that country. In these peats are imbedded many relics of a people who dwelt in that region long before the present race had migrated thither. These relics consist chiefly of curiously formed implements and weapons in stone and bronze—hammer, arrow, and spear heads, hatchets and knives, &c. Now, peat is formed slowly. It is the result of the annual growth and decay of numerous marsh-plants—each year’s mass of dead rushes, reeds, and grasses being overgrown by the vegetation of the succeeding year. The formation takes place in marshy hollows; and in process of time, consolidates and sinks into the soft soil on which it rests. The growth of each year, however, adds only a very thin stratum to the formation, and when this is pressed by the strata of subsequent years, it sinks into still smaller compass. The Danish peats attain a thickness of about thirty feet, and they must therefore have been a very considerable time under formation. Imbedded in peat are often found the trunks of trees; indeed, in some instances part of a forest growing in the hollow in which peat was being formed, has been choked by the rank growth of marsh-plants, and the soil becoming too moist for the favourable growth of the trees, they, robbed of their strength from these two causes, have fallen a prey to storms, and become overgrown with peat. Thus single trees or clusters of trees, or even whole forests, may be part of a peat-moss.