200 MR STARK ON THE SUPPOSED PROGRESS OF HUMAN SOCIETY 



state, must be looked upon as little better than idle dreams. The first descendant 

 of the first man, according to the sacred historian, was a " tiller of the ground ;" 

 his brother was " a keeper of sheep ;" and both of these occupations are given as 

 contemporaneous with one another, and with the existence of men. And such 

 was the increase of population, that the son of Cain gave his name to a city. The 

 nomade or pastoral life, to which the neighbouring country was well adapted, is 

 not characterized as a separate mode of living till some considerable time after- 

 wards. The use of metals, and the practice of at least one of the fine arts, is 

 recorded in the short narrative given by Moses ; and every circumstance referring 

 to the race, entitles us to conclude, that a high state of civilization at least a 

 state equal to all the wants of society at this period prevailed among the de- 

 scendants of the first pair. 



It is to be remarked, besides, as supporting the contemporaneous existence 

 of domesticated cattle with man, that, in the sacred narrative, they are distin- 

 guished by a parenthetic clause, separating them from the other beasts. " And 

 God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind." 

 (Gen. i. 25.) And again, " And Adam gave names to all cattle" &c. (ii. 20.) And 

 afterwards, " Let him have dominion over the cattle" (i. 26.) The same phrase 

 is used when narrating the animals that went into the ark : " Every beast after 

 his kind, and all the cattle after their kind" And this interpretation of the pas- 

 sage is fully warranted on the authority of another inspired writer. In the 8th 

 Psalm, alluding to the high rank of man in the scale of created beings, this pas- 

 sage occurs : " Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands 

 all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field." The corresponding phrase 

 for " cattle" in the former passage is here " sheep and oxen." 



III. CULTIVATION OP THE CEREALIA. 



I now come, in the third place, to make a few remarks on the Cerealia, or 

 cultivated grains, as connected with the third stage of man's supposed progress 

 from savage to civilized life. These, like man himself, and the domesticated ani- 

 mals, are supposed to have attained their present productive powers, through long 

 ages of experiment ; and some writers have considered it as a signal triumph of 

 art over nature, to have improved barren grasses into the wheat, barley, and oats 

 of the present day. Thus BUFFON states, in regard to wheat, " Wheat, for ex- 

 ample, is a plant which man has changed to that point, that it nowhere exists in 

 a state of nature." * " The same corn (says Sir HUMPHRY DAVY) which, four 

 thousand years ago, was raised from an improved grass by an inventor, worship- 

 ped for two thousand years in the ancient world under the name of Ceres, still 

 forms the principal food of mankind." f And Dr TAYLOR, in his lately published 



* BUFFON, xxiii. 177. t Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher, p. 36. 



