328 FOSSIL MEN. 



is in the main the Condition of the Australasian and 

 Polynesian peoples, and of the primitive men of South- 

 eastern Asia, the most isolated and least modified of 

 men next to the Americans. It follows that the first 

 industry must have been agriculture, or more probably 

 horticulture; for, as in America and Polynesia, the 

 tillage of the soil by man probably began ages before 

 he had any domestic animals to aid him. Without 

 realizing this, and picturing to ourselves the condition 

 of the primitive populations, tilling the ground with 

 rude implements and human toil alone, and with little 

 agricultural skill, we cannot fully sympathize with that 

 wail of the patriarch Lamech, which comes to us over 

 the ages, when he named his son Noah rest saying : 

 "This same shall comfort us concerning our work 

 and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the 

 Lord hath cursed." Even in his time the earth was 

 yielding her riches in too niggard a manner for the 

 increasing multitudes of men, and the violence born 

 of selfishness was making life still more hard and 

 dangerous. He could look back to an Edenic age, 

 when the land was not cursed ; he could look forward 

 to a reformer and improver to come, and his lamenta- 

 tion and his hope recorded in these archaic stories of 

 Genesis have their parallel in the difficulties and hopes 

 of every generation of men. 



The invention of fire and the use of clothing, both 

 of the most remote antiquity in the history of our 

 race, enabled men to subsist in the less genial cli- 

 mates ; and tradition concurs with sacred history 



