l6 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



higher than an ape in the order of animated nature. He 

 was also a carnivorous creature, hunted his prey in packs, and 

 if he varied his diet of flesh it was only with wild fruits or 

 roots. After awhile he learned the use of fire, and thus be- 

 came a cook — that one thing which distinguishes man more 

 prominently than anything else from every other animal. 

 When he had acquired this art, he liked his meat better than 

 he did before ; this led to further reflections, and primitive 

 man learned to pray — that is, to aspire, in the desire for 

 further improvement of his lot, and seek means to that end. 

 When man had become a cooking and a praying animal he 

 was not far from discovering that two blades of grass could be 

 made to grow where one had grown before. But to do this 

 required much thought and work ; he had to settle down to 

 cultivate the ground successfully. The pursuits of the hunter 

 are incompatible with the occupation of the farmer ; and one 

 of the greatest strides which any people have ever taken 

 from savagery toward civilization is that during which a 

 nomadic, predatory tribe is transformed into tillers of the 

 soil with fixed habitations. 



It is just at this turning-point in the development of human 

 capacity for self-improvement that birds appear in a new 

 light and take on new uses. To the wandering, hunting 

 barbarian they were only objects of the chase, which he killed 

 for food and clothing, as he did any other animal which 

 could satisfy such primitive wants. He ate their flesh, and 

 sucked their eggs, and sewed their skins to wear, and stuck 

 their feathers in his hair to make himself look fine. Such 

 barbarians are not all dead yet, nor of one sex onl)', nor con- 

 fined to the tribes we call savage ; they are still in evidence, 

 in our own midst, of our most primitive ape-ancestry. But 

 very early in the art of agriculture observant and reflective 

 farmers found insidious foes which often brought to naught 

 the sweat of their brows. What to his hunting progenitors had 

 been known only as a trifling annoyance, in buzzing and 

 biting or stinging, offset in some cases by the morsels of food 



