INVENTION OF AGRICULTURE. 425 



animals were merely used as meat ; next, their milk- 

 giving powers were developed, and so a daily food was 

 obtained without killing the animal itself; then they 

 were broken in to carry burdens, to assist their masters 

 in the chase and in war ; and clothes and houses were 

 manufactured from their skins. 



The forest tribes who settled on the banks of 

 rivers learnt to swim and to make nets, fish-traps, 

 rafts, and canoes. When they migrated they followed 

 the river, and so were carried to the sea. Then the 

 ocean became their fish-pond. They learnt to build 

 large canoes, with mast and matting sails ; they fol- 

 lowed the fish far away ; lost the land at night, or in 

 a storm ; discovered new shores, returned home, and 

 again set out as colonists, with their wives and families, 

 to the lands which they had found. By such means 

 the various tribes were dispersed beyond the seas. 



Thirdly, when the tribes were in the forest condi- 

 tion they lived partly upon roots and berries, partly 

 upon game. The men hunted, and the women col- 

 lected the vegetable food, upon which they subsisted 

 exclusively during the absence of their husbands. 

 When the habitations of a clan were fixed, it often 

 happened that the supply of edible plants in the 

 neighbourhood would be exhausted, and starvation 

 suggested the idea of sowing and transplanting. Agri- 

 culture was probably a female invention ; it was 

 certainly at first a female occupation. The bush was 

 burnt down to clear a place for the crop, and the 

 women being too idle to remove the ashes from the 

 soil, cast the seed upon them. The ashes acting as 

 manure, garden varieties of the eating plants appeared. 

 Among the pastoral people, the seed-bearing grasses 

 were also cultivated into large-grained corn. But as 



