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INTRODUCTION.

DURING the last forty or fifty years an immense wealth of facts, previously unascertained, has been amassed within the provinces of archæology, philology, and geology. By inference from these, and by reasoning upon the data furnished by them, the conviction is arrived at that man made his first appearance upon the earth very many ages ago, during a period of time when probably the physical conditions of the world were in important respects considerably different from those which obtain at present.

So far, also, as can be judged from these materials, the human race at its commencement was in the lowest conceivable condition of civilization.

Its

progress upwards to that state of comparatively advanced culture, which is observed to generally prevail at the dawn of history, must probably have passed through at least three or four principal well-marked stages.

It is almost stating an axiom to say that human life can only be maintained by the continued use and consumption of material products of Nature, prepared, fashioned, and modified for the purpose by the application of human labour and skill.

Moreover, during man's lowest or least developed stage of civilization the animals and vegetables on which he feeds are both alike in a wild condition; he has not yet succeeded in domesticating either. The instruments, also, by which he catches and battles with the one, and gathers or roots up the other, are rude and inefficient-wooden clubs, bows with flint-tipped arrows, creeper-made cords, springes of fibre, stone-flakes, and such like things. His clothing is furnished from the skins of the beasts which he slays. His dwelling is a cave, or other natural

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