seems to have had its origin in the drill. To those who have only seen the lathe in its improved modern forms this may not be clear, but it is seen by looking at the old-fashioned pole-lathe with which the turner used to shape his wooden bowls and chair-legs, which were made to revolve by a cord pulled up and down, on somewhat the same principle as the Homeric drill. The foot-lathe, with its crank and continuous revolution, superseded this, to be itself encroached upon by the introduction of steam-power for driving, and even for applying the tool in the self-acting lathe.

In examining these groups of instruments and machines, the development of many of them has been traced back till their origins are lost in dim præ-historic ages, or to where ancient history can show them arising from a fresh idea or a new turn given to an old one. It is seldom possible to get at the real author of an ancient invention. Thus no one knows exactly when and how that wonderful mechanical contrivance, the screw, appeared. It was familiar to the Greek mathematicians, and the screw linenpresses and oil-presses of classic times look almost modern in their construction. In the period of ancient civilization there appear the beginnings of that immense change which is remodelling modern life, by inventions which set the forces of nature to do man's heavy work for him. This great change seems to have been especially brought on by contrivances to save the heavy toil of watering the fields. A simple hand-labour contrivance of this kind is the shadoof of the Nile valley, where a long pole with a counterpoise at one end is supported on posts, and carries a bucket hanging to the longer end to dip up water from below. One need not travel to the East to watch this old contrivance, for it is to be seen at work in our brickfields. For irrigation, it was mechanically an improvement on

this to set a gang of slaves to turn a great wheel with buckets or earthen jars at its circumference, which rose full from the water below, and as they turned over emptied themselves into a trough at a higher level. But when such a wheel was built to dip in a running stream, then the current itself would turn the wheel, and thus would come into existence the noria or irrigating waterwheel often mentioned in ancient literature, and to be seen still at work both in the East and in Europe. By these or some similar steps of invention the water-wheel was made a source of power for doing other work, such as grinding corn, instead of the women at the quern or the slaves at the treadmill, or the mill-horse in his everlasting round. As the Greek epigram says, "Cease your work, ye maids who laboured at the mills, sleep and let the birds sing to the returning dawn, for Demeter has bidden the water nymphs to do your task; obedient to her call, they throw themselves on the wheel and turn the axle and the heavy mill." The classical corn-mill, with the cog-wheels driven by the water-wheel, may have been a good deal like the water-mills still working on our country streams. Such machinery was early applied to grinding corn, and afterwards to other manufactures, so that now the word mill no longer means a grinding-mill only, but is also used where machinery is driven by power for other purposes. It was a great movement in civilization for the water-mill and its companion contrivance the wind-mill to come into use as force-providers, doing all sorts of labour, from the heaviest work of the European factory down to turning the Tibetan prayer-wheels, which go round repeating for ever the sacred Buddhist formula. Within the last century the civilized world has been drawing an immense supply of power from a new source, the coal burnt in the furnace

of the steam-engine, which is already used so wastefully that economists are uneasily calculating how long this. stored-up fossil force will last, and what must be turned to next-tide force or sun's heat-to labour for us.

Thus, in

modern times, man seeks more and more to change the labourer's part he played in early ages, for the higher duty of director or controller of the world's force.

CHAPTER IX.

ARTS OF LIFE-(continued).

Quest of wild food, 206—Hunting, 207—Trapping, 211-Fishing, 212-Agriculture, 214-Implements, 216-Fields, 218—Cattle, pasturage, 219-War, 221-Weapons, 221-Armour, 222-Warfare of lower t bes, 223-of higher nations, 225.

HAVING, in the last chapter, examined the instruments used by man, we have next to look at the arts by which he maintains and protects himself. His first need is to get his daily food. In tropical forests, savages may easily live on what nature provides, like the Andaman Islanders, who gather fruits and honey, hunt wild pigs in the jungle, and take turtle and fish on the coast. Many forest tribes of Brazil, though they cultivate a little, depend mostly on wild food. Of such the rude man has no lack, for there is game in plenty and the rivers swarm with fish, while the woods yield him a supply of roots and bulbs, calabashes, palm-nuts, beans, and many other fruits; he collects wild honey, birds' eggs, grubs out of rotten wood, nor does he despise insects, even ants. In less fertile lands savage life goes on well while game and fish abound, but when these fail it becomes an unceasing quest for food, as where the Australians roam over their deserts on the look-out for every eatable root or

insect, or the low Rocky Mountain tribes gather pine-nuts and berries, catch snakes, and drag lizards out of their holes with a hooked stick. The Fuegians wander along their bleak inhospitable shores feeding mostly on shell-fish, so that in the course of ages their shells, with fish-bones and other rubbish, have formed long banks above highwater mark. Such shell-heaps or "kitchen-middens" are found here and there all round the coasts of the world, marking the old resorts of such tribes; for instance on the coast of Denmark, where archæologists search them for relics of rude Europeans, who, in the Stone age, led a life somewhat like that of Tierra del Fuego. Hunting and fishing go on through all levels of society, beginning with the savages who have no other means of subsistence, till at last among civilized nations game and fish hardly do more than supplement the more regular supplies of grain and meat from the farm. Looking at the devices of the hunter and fisher, it will be seen how thoroughly most of them belong to the ruder stages of culture.

The natives of the Brazilian forests, to whom tracking game is the chief business of life, do it with a skill that fills with wonder the white men who have watched them. The Botocudo hunter, gliding stealthily through the underwood, knows every habit and sign of bird and beast; the remains of berries and pods show him what creature has fed there; he knows how high up an armadillo displaces the leaves in passing, and so can distinguish its track from the snake's or tortoise's, and follow it to its burrow by the scratches of its scaly armour on the mud. Even the sense of smell of this savage hunter is keen enough to help him in tracking. Hidden behind the trunk of a tree, he can imitate the cries of birds and beasts to bring them within range of his deadly poisoned arrow, and he will even entice