INGENUITY AND LUXURY 



giving-off of heat by the body, through which the in- 

 tegrity of the bodily machine would be threatened. 

 Such is the end subserved by the coats of feathers and 

 of fur with which man's confreres of the animal world 

 are provided by Nature. Divested of this natural 

 covering, man has no resource but to provide an arti- 

 ficial substitute, or to take up his permanent abode 

 in the tropics. 



The evolutionist assures us that the time was when 

 man was provided with a natural, heat-conserving 

 covering of hair; as also there was a time when our 

 remote ancestor did not attempt to stray beyond the 

 tropics. In this stage of his development man doubt- 

 less neither felt the need, nor conceived the idea, of 

 artificial clothing. It was only, we may suppose, when 

 the wandering impulse based probably upon the over- 

 populating of his old environment led him gradu- 

 ally to seek new territories away from the Equator, 

 that the new experience of changing seasons brought 

 to the growing intelligence of our primitive ancestor 

 the idea of artificial protection from the weather. 

 That idea once grasped and put into execution, and 

 combined with the kindred idea of producing warmth 

 with an artificial fire, gave man the key that unlocked 

 the hitherto closed doors of the North Temperate 

 Zone. Provided with these ideas of conserving the 

 heat of the bodily machine though as yet far enough 

 from understanding the real nature of his discovery 

 man entered upon the difficult but alluring pathway 

 to the conquest of the world. 



When one reflects on the perpetual fight for life that 





