190 MR STARK ON THE SUPPOSED PROGRESS OF HUMAN SOCIETY 



fly from the lion or tiger, the preservation of the species is to be attributed. If 

 the lion and tiger are provided with fangs and claws for the purpose of procuring 

 food suitable to their carnivorous propensities, so the more timid animals, which 

 form their prey, are provided either with weapons to defend themselves so far 

 when in numbers, or speed to distance their enemies in the chase. But man has, 

 confessedly, none of that instinctive ferociousness which impels him to feed on 

 living prey ; neither the structure of his body nor the arrangement of his mem- 

 bers is calculated for such a mode of acquiring food ; and when he hunts down 

 animals as a portion of his subsistence, he does so from knowledge previously ac- 

 quired by individuals of his race, and with implements suited to the nature of the 

 animals pursued. 



And if the transition from the hunting to the pastoral state seems extremely 

 improbable, and, if we may judge from not one instance of this transference 

 having been observed, we may say impossible, by what train of circumstances 

 could an entirely pastoral people become agriculturists ? If the seeds of the agri- 

 cultural plants do not grow spontaneously, and there is no evidence of their do- 

 ing so anywhere, or to any useful extent, where did these early essayists in cul- 

 tivation procure their supply of seeds ? What could induce them to attempt the 

 transformation, by cultivation, of a sterile herb (according to BUFFON) into wheat ? 

 or what could teach them that, after years or ages of experiment, a barren grass 

 (according to other authors) would appear in their fields as oats or barley ? No 

 pressure of population no reflection on the processes of nature which they wit- 

 nessed around them, could lead men, ignorant of seeds beyond the produce of the 

 forests, to conceive that the small seeds of the grasses, buried in the ground, 

 would, after a time, be replaced twenty-fold, even if they escaped destruction from 

 their multiplied herds.* And it is not very evident how men, in that degraded 

 situation, could first ascertain that the labour of the horse and ox might be made 

 available for the cultivation of the ground. 



But in point of fact, this fancied gradation has no existence in nature. 

 " Throughout all America," says Dr ROBERTSON, "we scarcely meet with any 

 nation of hunters which does not practise some species of cultivation;"! the 

 Koords in Mesopotamia unite the pursuits of shepherds and cultivators ;| and, ac- 

 cording to HUMBOLDT, tribes of savages exist in South America, who, assembled in 

 villages, cultivate the plantain tree, cassava, and cotton. A species of agricul- 

 ture the cultivation of maize existed in America long before the arrival of 

 the Europeans : and, as in mockery of the classical stage of pastoral life, the 

 Indians of this great Continent have overleaped this intermediate step, of which, 

 perhaps, they were not aware, and joined a species of agriculture to the pursuit 

 of hunting. HUMBOLDT accounts for this anomaly in human progression by stat- 



* MALTHUS, Essay on the Principle of Population, p. 43, 4to edition. 



t ROBERTSON'S America, ii. 117. J BUCKINGHAM'S Travels in Mesopotamia, i. 300. 



Personal Narrative, iii. 211. 



