Tray5s and and other similar inventions were originally devised as aids in hunting. But that pursuit educated man in many other directions. He pitted his ingenuity in a variety of ways against the wary senses and suspicious nature of the beasts of the forest. He sought to overcome them not merely by force, but by stratagem. He devised traps and snares of many kinds, ever seeking some novel deception as the game he was after had become too subtle for his older wiles. One of the earliest of these must have been the pitfall. We can imagine no other device by which the ancient Cave-dwellers of Belgium could have overcome those powerful Carnivora, the cave bear and the sabre-toothed tiger, more for midable than any now on earth. That they did so, and frequently, the numerous bones of these animals in the caverns, cracked for their marrow, leave no room for doubt. Ingenious instruments for imitating the calls of animals and birds, and thus attracting them within the range of the hunter's weapons, are in use among all rude tribes.
Many travellers have recorded the surprising education of the senses which the hunting life brings about. The native eye can often detect the species, age, and size of an animal from a few tracks and signs hardly perceptible and absolutely meaningless to the civilized senses. The pur suit of wild food was also the cause of training certain animals to assist in the chase—notably the dog, the hunting-hawk, and fishing-heron, and perhaps the cat.
Wherever fish abounded it formed an important article of the food of primitive nations. Indeed, some ethnologists, as Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, have maintained that this was the main, and often the exclusive, diet of pre-historic nations. Along some watercourses fish are so plentiful that it requires no address to catch them, but usually some mechanical device is essential. Hence in all countries and from the earliest times nets, weirs, and dams have been familiar to the fisherfolk. Spears and gigs belong also to the arts of the simplest tribes. Even the Australians and various American tribes were familiar with the fish-hook, manufacturing it out of the claw of a bird or the crooked bone of a fish. The primeval Lake-dwellers of Switzerland and the anglers of ancient Egypt used a barbed bronze hook not unlike that which is still in vogue among our selves.
Both in hunting and fishing it was common for a large number of persons to unite their efforts in carrying out a general battne or in driving fish up a stream or into a dam. In this manner men were taught the advantages of association for a common end and the wisdom of carrying out matured plans. Travellers also state that such nations are usually quite jealous about their rights over their fishing- and hunting-grounds, thus showing that their mode of subsistence had developed their ideas of property rights and of geographical relations.
From this survey it is quite apparent that although the dependence on natural products for food had certain grave disadvantages, it was by no means deficient in stimuli urging man to the acquisition of new powers.
Anthropophagy.—An exception to this should probably be entered with regard to There is no doubt that cannibalism pre vailed extensively down to a quite recent epoch. The loathing which it inspires is not ancient nor was it widespread. The ancestors of the nations of Europe were cannibals at no very remote epoch, as the remains in the barrows of Germany testify, as do also the early traditions of the Greeks and Romans. Throughout America it was met with constantly in one form or another, reaching its acme among the Caribs, who smoked and dried the arms and legs of their enemies for provisions on their voy ages. It is still carried on to a hideous extent in some parts of Africa, even the bodies of those dying of sickness being consumed ; while the Malay race, as the Feejeeans and New Zealanders, were long notorious as the most familiar examples of man-eaters.
This custom, so repugnant to the feelings of modern life, is not neces sarily associated with a condition of extreme debasement. The Aztecs fattened and ate prisoners in great numbers, and went to war for the sole purpose of capturing this kind of game, but they ranked in culture among the highest of the native Americans. The Maoris of New Zealand were among the finest specimens of the Polynesian race. The Dvaks of Borneo are described as a noble-hearted, hospitable, and intelligent peo ple ; they are quite literary, all of them knowing how to read and write, and treasuring their books among their most prized articles ; yet they are cannibals of the most pronounced type, not only eating their captives taken in war and the criminals who are condemned to death by their laws, but even killing and eating their own relatives when they fall sick or grow old. It is a matter of history that about the eleventh century the taste for human flesh had gradually increased to such an extent in Egypt that it was sold openly in the cities, and the traffic could only be broken up by the most stringent measures. This seems to bear out the popular belief that a taste for this food, once acquired, becomes an over mastering appetite.
National culture takes a long stride in advance when the food-supply is drawn no longer from the sparse and uncertain resources of the forests, but is secured,