

1HO LESSONS FROM NATURE. [CHAP. VI. 



docile. . . . The girls have their dolls, in making dresses and shoes 

 for which they amuse and employ themselves. The boys have minia 

 ture bows, arrows, and spears ..... When grown up they are dutiful 

 to their parents. . . . Orphan children are readily adopted and well 

 cared for until they are able to provide for themselves. He concludes 

 by saying : The more I saw of the Esquimaux the higher was the 

 opinion I formed of them. &quot; The Origin of Civilisation, p. 343. 



The quotations just given bring us directly to the explicit 

 Thw new consideration of our fifth inquiry, the answer to 

 of m &quot; which has been already so much anticipated that, 

 namely, respecting the existence of a community 

 of nature amongst all the most diverse races of mankind. 

 Here again we must carefully bear in mind the inaccuracy 

 and the tendency to exaggeration so common with travellers, 

 as well as their liability to be intentionally deceived. Thus 

 Mr. Oldfield showed to some New Hollanders a drawing of 

 one of their own people, which they asserted to be intended 

 to represent not a man but a ship or a kangaroo, or other 

 very different object. Of this story Sir John Lubbock 

 shrewdly remarks : * &quot;It is not, however, quite clear to me 

 that they were not poking fun at Mr. Oldfield.&quot; A similar 

 explanation is probably available in some other cases also. 

 The absence of certain arts or customs in a given area at a 

 given early period, by no means necessarily implies that they 

 had not previously existed. The necessity of caution is 

 shown by the following remark f of Sir John Lubbock con 

 cerning the pictorial art : &quot; It is somewhat remarkable that 

 while even in the Stone period we find very fair drawings 

 of animals, yet in the latest part of the Stone age, 

 and throughout that of Bronze, they are almost entirely 

 wanting, and the ornamentation is confined to various com 

 binations of straight and curved lines and geometrical pat 

 terns.&quot; In the two preceding pages the same author relates 

 to us different curious modes of salutation ; but all such 

 curious customs prove the essential similarity and rationality 



* Prehistoric Times, p. 428. 



t The Origin of Civilisation, p. 25. 



