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Mr Worsaae was not able to trace the Danish face or form as a distinct element in the modern population.
We have here been obliged wholly to overlook Mr Worsaae's curious chapters about Ireland and the Isle of Man, and to give what we cannot but feel to be a very superficial view of the contents of his book generally; but our readers have seen enough to inspire them with an interest in it, and we trust that this will lead many of them to its entire perusal. By J. J. A. Worsaae, For.
The contrary, earnestly maintained by M. de Mortillet, has long been the general opinion. M. Worsaae declared, at the Brussels Congress, that the dolmens were erected by different peoples; M. Cazalis de Fondouce, M. Broca, and M. Cartailhac, share this belief.
I cannot close this account of the kitchen-middings, without calling attention to two very interesting facts. The importance of these mounds bears witness alike to the number of the inhabitants who dwelt near them, and the long duration of their sojourn. Worsaae sets back the initial date of the most ancient of the shell-mounds of the New World more than three thousand years.
The edges in many cases seem formed by a great number of small artificial tips or blows, and do not at all resemble edges made by a great natural fracture. The only relics that have been found resembling them are, according to Mr. Worsaae, some flint arrow-heads and spear-points discovered at great depths in the bogs of Denmark.
In Scotland, likewise in the Highlands and even in the Lowlands- -a considerable number of names, or at least of terminations, are still to be met in the geography of the country. Three or four names of places around Dublin, and the terminations of the names of the cities of Waterford, Wexford, Longford, and a few others, are all that Mr. Worsaae could find in Ireland.
The views of M. Worsaae, and the other Continental antiquarians who follow his classification, have indeed received remarkable confirmation of late years, by the discoveries which have been made in the beds of most of the Swiss lakes. It appears that a subsidence took place in the waters of the Lake of Zurich in the year 1854, laying bare considerable portions of its bed.
One is surprised to find in how great a degree the Northmen affected Britain; what an infusion of Scandinavian blood there is in our population; how many traces of their predominancy survive in names of places and in more tangible monuments. Mr Worsaae writes with a warm feeling towards his country and her historical reminiscences, but without allowing it to carry him into any extravagances.
In the Highlands, Mr Worsaae found the people retaining a very fresh recollection of the terrors of the Northmen, and ready to believe that their incursions might yet be renewed.
If I am not mistaken, Worsaae was the first to note the worked stones in the French possessions in Africa. They have been picked up in great numbers, especially near the watercourses at which the ancient inhabitants of the country slaked their thirst, as do their descendants at the present day.
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