272 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 



they ask, could the lion and the lamb exist 

 in the same boat? The answer is perfectly 

 obvious. Terror of the rising waters made a 

 common bond. The same thing", on a smaller 

 scale, has been seen again and again in flood- 

 time, when the most unlikely fellow-travellers 

 are found crowded on floating wreckage, the 

 strong too terrified to molest the weak, and 

 the weak forgetting even their natural enemies 

 in their all-absorbing fear of drowning. As 

 Tennyson says : 



" Lion and stoat have isled together, fool, 

 In time of flood." 



Fire, like flood, draws the most ill-assorted 

 fugitives together, and when a forest fire sweeps 

 across the open, it drives before it an amazing 

 stampede, lions and fawns fleeing side by side, 

 eager only to outstrip the death that roars and 

 blazes at their heels. 



First, then, we may assume, came agri- 

 culture in its crudest form. Adam dug, no 

 doubt, with his hands. Cain may have used 

 flints. Then would have come the inspiration 

 to attract and tame some of the less formidable 

 wild animals of Western Asia, making them do 

 useful work. The males were killed for food. 

 The ewe and cow gave milk. The skins of 

 both were used for clothing. We cannot know 

 which was the first animal to come under man's 



