17 



The comparative ease with which young, flexible branches could be bent 

 to meet this need for protection from the weather led on to their preparation 

 by different methods, so that they could be used for the construction of a kind 

 of wattle-work, which, when daubed with mud, appealed to the desire for some 

 more efficient protection; such huts formed the early homes of men all the 

 world over. 



Caves also offered attractions so strong that cave-dwellers are still to be 

 found in some European countries to-day, dark and ill-veutilated as they are. 

 But primitive man rarely attempted a fixed dwelling. Not that he troubled 

 himself with questions of sanitation ; though traces of drains to carry off 

 rain-water have been detected round the remains of these huts in England. 

 Shelter, safety, and food-supply were the chief motive for choosing the position 

 of a home in those days, as they have been more or less ever since. To be 

 near wood and water for fuel, food, and drink to be secure from prowling 

 animals or enemies governed the choice. When no more fish could be caught. 

 no more game snared, or when the stream ran dry. primitive man moved on 

 elsewhere. 



In order that this nomadic life might be as free from trouble as may be, 

 all sorts of tents were devised by different nations, of which one form is still 

 in use in logging and other camps to-day. The Jews pitched one kind of tent 

 during their long sojourn in the wilderness; the Assyrians found another 

 which suited their purpose better; while the Huns, in later times, stretched 

 the skins of the wild beasts they slew for food over wicker frames. There 

 was also a period when men built dwellings on large rafts, as did the Lake 

 dwellers of Switzerland. These dwellings were not unlike the log-huts familiar 

 to every Canadian settler, more especially in the early days of the back- 

 woodsmen. 



THE GROWTH OF THE MODERN HOUSE. 



Gradual progress was made in comfort and in durability as men learnt 

 to control the materials at their disposal, such as sand, reeds, clay, wood, and 

 stone; so that in Egypt and Rome. Babylon and Athens, buildings were erected 

 of which the ruins excite our lively admiration at the present time. 



England owes much to the teaching of the Romans in this matter of 

 house-construction; though, in consequence of the wars which absorbed all 

 men's energies for hundreds of years, it was a long time before the Saxon hut 

 developed into the Norman castle, with its walls of stone 4 or 5 feet thick, 

 built to last through centuries of use. The conveniences so familiar to us in 

 the twentieth century were introduced to the West very gradually from the 

 East; such as bricks for chimneys, glass for windows, baths and furnaces for 

 the supply of hot and cold water; until the sixteenth century is associated 

 with the most beautiful, convenient, and comfortable period of English 

 domestic architecture, known to most of us by pictures and description. Then 

 dawned the first real conception of our modern ideas of comfort, which 

 further developed in the reign of Queen Anne, and have reached a climax 

 of luxury in the modern palaces erected in many cities at the present time. 



THE SCIENCE AND ART OF HOUSE-CONSTRUCTION. 



The home-maker of to-day can, if she clux>se. avail herself of the whole 

 past experience of the human race in their efforts to provide a suitable 

 resting-place and shelter for their families. 



