Mmis Dependence on the Lower Animals. 



191 



vive their annihilation; that with the dis- 

 appearance of domestic cattle the great 

 civilizations of the world would disappear, 

 and existing society disintegrate into 

 tribes which would sink to a very low level, 

 from which they would again emerge to 

 achieve a civilization comparable with that 

 of the Incas of Peru at the date of the 

 Spanish invasion. 



Yes! it is a big debt that 'man owes to 

 the domesticated animals! and especially 

 to the ox, and if we could only justly esti- 

 mate the extent of the obligation, we should 

 see that it was not without good reason 



though the sowing of rice may have ori- 

 ginated with broadcast sowings over areas 

 liable to inundations, the tilling of the soil 

 commenced by dropping each grain separ- 

 ately in a little hole made with a stick, 

 from which an advance was made to the 

 pick-shaped branch as a more effective 

 implement, which may have been in use 

 for centuries before it suggested itself to 

 any one to take a much larger branch and 

 drag it through the soil by means of oxen. 

 Civilization may be said to rest on the 

 practical application of this idea, for as 

 long as man was dependent for his crops- 



A PRIMITIVK PLOW. 



that the ancient Egyptians elevated the 

 bull to the rank of a divinity, and that 

 the Hindoos regarded the slaughter of 

 an ox as an offense heinous as- that of 

 murder. 



The plowing of the earliest agricul- 

 tural people was with very rude imple- 

 ments. The Hindoo plow of to-day has 

 retained its primitive form; the Egyptian 

 is not appreciably modified; the same sim- 

 ple primitive plow may even still be seen 

 in some parts of Germany, and a very little 

 study of it will suffice to show that both it 

 and the pick originated in the branch of a 

 tree trimmed of all its secondary branches 

 but two spurs which were left, one to pene- 

 trate and loosen the soil, the other to hold 

 and guide it by. 



There is little room for doubt that al- 



on the work of his own hands, the labor 

 exacted of him would have been so ex- 

 hausting that there would have been no 

 leisure for devotion to the useful arts, and 

 under such conditions population could 

 never become dense or highly civilized. 

 The people of Europe and Asia, unaided 

 by domestic cattle, would never have 

 achieved a higher civilization than the 

 people of America. It is generally sup- 

 posed that nstive American races are of 

 lower type, but there is a great mass of 

 evidence in support of the view that in 

 some remote past a colony from the old 

 world (perhaps of men only) established 

 itself about the northern coast of South 

 America, giving origin to the semi-civiliza- 

 tions of Mexico and Peru, and by inter- 

 mixture with aboriginal races, perhaps in- 



