208 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



enough to have sent out emigrations to the nearest 

 inviting lands.' The same lapse of time would have 

 sufficed to develop agriculture, to domesticate animals, 

 and to make some progress in architectural and other 

 arts of life. He quotes the remarkable passage of 

 Reclus l as to the agency of woman in the inventions 

 of early art, and shows that this accords with more 

 modern experience among the less civilised nations. 

 It is obvious that all this tends to bring scientific 

 anthropology into the closest relation with the old 

 Biblical history, though Hale, in deference, perhaps, 

 to modern prejudices, does not refer to this. 



In the passage quoted by Hale, Reclus says : * It 

 is to woman that mankind owes all that has made us 

 men.' Following this hint of the ingenious French 

 writer, we may imagine the first man and woman 

 inhabiting some fertile region, rich in fruits and other 

 natural products, and subsisting at first on the un- 

 cultivated bounty of nature. With the birth of their 

 first child, perhaps before, would come the need of 

 shelter either in some dry cavern or booth of poles 

 and leaves or bark, carpeted perhaps with moss or 

 boughs of pine. This would be the first 'home,' 

 with the woman for its housekeeper. We may 

 imagine the man bringing to it the lamb or kid whose 

 dam he had killed, and the woman, with motherly 

 instinct, pitying the little orphan and training it to be 

 a domestic pet, the first of tamed animals. She, too, 

 would store grain, seeds and berries for domestic use, 

 Primitive Folk (Contemporary Science Series), p. 58. 



