2 6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



necessarily imply barbarism, for even peoples so highly civilized 

 as the Aztecs and the Peruvians under the Incas, although using 

 ornaments of gold and silver, had not yet learned the art of working 

 in iron, but were still in the bronze period, which in Europe pre- 

 ceded the Glacial epoch. It is remarkable that the Negritos, with 

 rare exceptions, have never attained the slightest degree of artistic 

 excellence in shaping the materials at their command. Their stone 

 hatchets are rudely chipped, instead of being ground and polished 

 like those of the Papuans and Polynesians, and they do not know 

 how to bore a hole through a stone for the insertion of a helve or 

 handle. The same lack of skill is shown in making instruments 

 out of various materials, the ugly wooden clubs, the clumsy and ill- 

 proportioned shields, and the baskets roughly woven out of reeds. 

 There is no evidence of taste in the form or of delicate fancy in the 

 ornamentation of their work, and even when their sole aim is to beau- 

 tify their persons, as in the painful tattoo, they succeed only in dis- 

 disfiguring the back and breast with deep, straight gashes and hideous 

 scars. Their occasional attempts to draw figures of men or animals 

 are worse than the crude and awkward scrawlings of a schoolboy 

 on a slate, and consist merely of straight lines extending in different 

 directions and representing arms and legs. Like the palaeolithic 

 man of Europe, they have no knowledge of pottery, and have never 

 made earthenware vessels in which to cook food, but roast their 

 meat on hot stones. Only in one respect are they in advance of the 

 European cave men, namely, in the possession of a domestic animal, 

 the dingo, whereas the dog does not appear as the companion of man 

 in Europe until the new stone age. 



The Australians are nomads, living by the chase and wandering 

 from place to place in search of game; they have neither cattle nor 

 horses, nor any kind of draught or riding animals. The care of 

 flocks and herds, and especially the ownership of land and the culti- 

 vation of the soil, not only presuppose but also promote intellectual 

 culture. The man who plants trees and sows seed, and waits for 

 the ripening of the fruit and the reaping of the harvest, watches 

 the change of seasons, observes meteorological conditions, acquires 

 habits of reflection and calculation, looks to the future, forms plans 

 which it often takes years to realize, acts with foresight, becomes 

 prudent in preparing for exigencies, and thrifty in the management 

 of his affairs. Husbandry is therefore one of the earliest and most 

 effective agents of civilization. The first agriculturist was a Pro- 

 metheus, an inspirer of " forethought," as the name implies, who 

 fired the human forms of clay with higher aims and aspirations, 

 lifted the race out of primitive brutism, and opened to it a new 

 and illimitable career of progress. The Australian tribes have never 



