152 GENERAL EVOLUTION. 



over much of the earth. The great masses of stone piled on each 

 other in the simplest form in Southern India, and the circles of 

 stones planted on end in England at Stonehenge and Abury, and 

 in Peru at Sillustani, are relics of that period. More complex 

 are the great Himyaritic walls of Arabia, the works of the ances- 

 tors of the Phoenicians in Asia Minor, and the titanic workmanship 

 of the Pelasgi in Greece and Italy. In the iron age we find gra- 

 nitic hills shaped or excavated into temples ; as, for example, 

 everywhere in Southern India. Near Madura the circumference 

 of an acropolis-like hill is cut into a series of statues in high re- 

 lief, of sixty feet in elevation. Easter Island, composed of two 

 volcanic cones, one thousand miles from the west coast of South 

 America, in the bosom of the Pacific, possesses several colossi cut 

 from the intrusive basalt, some in high relief on the face of the 

 rock, others in detached blocks removed by human art from their 

 original positions and brought nearer the sea-shore. 



Finally, at a more advanced stage, the more ornate and com- 

 plex structures of Central America, of Cambodia, Nineveh and 

 Egypt, represent the period of greatest display of architectural ex- 

 penditure. The same amount of human force has perhaps never 

 been expended in this direction since, though higher conceptions 

 of beauty have been developed in architecture with increasing in- 

 tellectuality. 



Man has passed through the block-and-brick building period 

 of his boyhood, and should rise to higher conceptions of what is 

 the true disposition of power for " him who builds for aye," and 

 learn that *^ spectacle " is often the unwilling friend of j^rogress. 



No traces of metallic implements have ever been found in the 

 salt-mines of Armenia, the turquoise-quarries in Arabia, the cities 

 of Central America, or the excavations for mica in North Carolina, 

 while the direct evidence points to the conclusion that in those 

 places flint was exclusively used. 



The simplest occupations, as requiring the least exercise of 

 mind, are the pursuit of the chase and the tending of flocks and 

 herds. Accordingly, we find our first parents engaged in these 

 occupations. Cain, we are told, was, in addition, a tiller of the 

 ground. Agriculture in its simplest forms requires but little 

 more intelligence than the pursuits just mentioned, though no 

 employment is capable of higher development. If we look at the 

 savage nations at present occupying nearly half the land surface 

 of the earth, we shall find many examples of the former indus- 



