INTRODUCTION XV 
for beemanship in this category. The primeval 
huntsman must have found much difficulty in 
bringing down his game, and still more in securing 
it, when maimed, but yet capable of eluding final 
capture. For this purpose some sort of retrieving 
animal, fleeter of foot and more cunning than its 
master, must have been even more necessary in 
primeval times than it is in the modern days of 
the gun. There seems to be no evidence of man 
indicating the most elementary civilisation without 
sure signs also that he had trained and used some 
sort of dog to help him in his daily food-forays. 
But man must have existed long before civilisation 
can be said to have come within age-long distance 
of him. In these times, beset with enemies, he 
must have built his hut nest-like in some high, 
impregnable tree, out of reach of night-prowling 
foes ; and it is scarcely conceivable that the dog 
was his companion under these conditions. More 
probably he lived, for the most part, on fruits and 
honey-comb, and such of the small creatures as he 
could capture with his naked hands. Thus, in 
all likelihood, the first hunter was a bee-hunter. 
Eolithic man may have had his own rocky fastness 
or clump of hollow trees, where the wild bees con- 
gregated ; and with the coming of each summer 
he may have followed his swarms through the 
