The rude type of the implements, the absence of fine pottery, and the
peculiarities of the human remains, indicate a race of occupants more
ancient than the "mound-builders." The deepest implement observed was
buried 50 cm. under the stalagmitic surface. Dr. Hovey has proved that
the rate of stalagmitic growth in Wyandotte Cave, Indiana, is .0254 cm.
annually; and if that was the rate in Jacobs Cavern, 1968 years would
have been needed for the embedding of that implement. Polished rocks
outside the cavern and pictographs in the vicinity indicate the work of
a prehistoric race earlier than the Osage Indians, who were the historic
owners previous to the advent of the white man. (H. C. H.)
JACOBSEN, JENS PETER (1847-1885), Danish imaginative writer, was born at
Thisted in Jutland, on the 7th of April 1847; he was the eldest of the
five children of a prosperous merchant. He became a student at the
university of Copenhagen in 1868. As a boy he showed a remarkable turn
for science, particularly for botany. In 1870, although he was secretly
writing verses already, Jacobsen definitely adopted botany as a
profession. He was sent by a scientific body in Copenhagen to report on
the flora of the islands of Anholt and Læsö. About this time the
discoveries of Darwin began to exercise a fascination over him, and
finding them little understood in Denmark, he translated into Danish
_The Origin of Species_ and _The Descent of Man_. In the autumn of
1872, while collecting plants in a morass near Ordrup, he contracted
pulmonary disease. His illness, which cut him off from scientific
investigation, drove him to literature. He met the famous critic, Dr
Georg Brandes, who was struck by his powers of expression, and under his
influence, in the spring of 1873, Jacobsen began his great historical
romance of _Marie Grubbe_. His method of composition was painful and
elaborate, and his work was not ready for publication until the close of
1876. In 1879 he was too ill to write at all; but in 1880 an improvement
came, and he finished his second novel, _Niels Lyhne_. In 1882 he
published a volume of six short stories, most of them written a few
years earlier, called, from the first of them, _Mogens_. After this he
wrote no more, but lingered on in his mother's house at Thisted until
the 30th of April 1885. In 1886 his posthumous fragments were collected.
It was early recognized that Jacobsen was the greatest artist in prose
that Denmark has produced. He has been compared with Flaubert, with De
Quincey, with Pater; but these parallelisms merely express a sense of
the intense individuality of his style, and of his untiring pursuit of
beauty in colour, form and melody. Although he wrote so little, and
crossed the living stage so hurriedly, his influence in the North has
been far-reaching. It may be said that no one in Denmark or Norway has
tried to write prose carefully since 1880 whose efforts have not been in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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