204 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



afford no suitable measui*e. These facts have, iu recent years, given a 

 different direction to opinion as to the manner in which the great 

 groups of mankind have become distributed over the areas where they 

 are now found ; and difficulties once considered insuperable become 

 soluble when regarded in connection with those great alterations of 

 the outlines of land and sea which are shown to have been goings on 

 up to the very latest geographical periods. The ancient monuments 

 of Egypt, which take us back perhaps seven thousand years from the 

 present time, indicate that when they were erected the neighboring 

 countries were in a condition of civilization not very greatly different 

 from that which existed when they fell under the dominion of the 

 Romans or Mohammedans hardly fifteen hundred years ago ; and the 

 progress of the population toward that condition can hardly be ac- 

 counted for otherwise than by prolonged gradual transformations, 

 going back to times so far distant as to require a geological rather 

 than an historical standard of reckoning. 



Man, in short, takes his place with the rest of the animate world, 

 in the advancing front of which he occupies so conspicuous a position. 

 Yet for this position he is indebted not to any exclusive powers of his 

 own, but to the wonderful compelling forces of Nature which have 

 lifted him, entirely without his knowledge, and almost without his 

 participation, so far above the animals of whom he is still one, though 

 the only one able to see or consider what he is. 



For the social habits essential to his progress, which he possessed 

 even in his most primitive state, man is without question dependent 

 on his ancestors, as he is for his form and other physical peculiarities. 

 In his advance to civilization he was insensibly forced, by the pressure 

 of external circumstances, through the more savage condition, in 

 which his life was that of the hunter, first to pastoral and then to 

 agricultural occupations. The requirements of a population gradu- 

 ally increasing in numbers could only be met by a supply of food 

 more regular and more abundant than could be provided by the chase. 

 But the possibility of the change from the hunter to the shepherd or 

 herdsman rested on the antecedent existence of animals suited to 

 supply man with food, having gregarious habits, and fitted for domes- 

 tication, such as sheep, goats, and horned cattle ; for their support the 

 social grasses were a necessary preliminary, and for the growth of 

 these in sufficient abimdance and naturally suitable for pasture was 

 required. A further evasion of man's growing difficulty in obtaining 

 sufficint food was secured by aid of the cereal grasses, wliich supplied 

 the means by which agriculture, the outcome of pastoral life, became 

 the chief occupation of more civilized generations. Lastly, when these 

 increased facilities for providing food were in turn overtaken by the 

 growth of the population, new power to cope with the recurring diffi- 

 culty was gained through the cultivation of mechanical arts and of 

 thought, for which the needful leisure was for the first time obtained 



