[24]

(29

Ch. I

long ages, if we may judge from the immense interval of time which seems to have elapsed before the men of the neolithic period took to grinding & polishing their stone tools. In breaking the flints, as Sir J. Lubbock also remarks, sparks would have been emitted, & in grinding them, friction would have made them hot; "thus the two usual methods of obtaining fire may have originated." The nature if fire would have been previously known in the many volcanic regions in which lava occasionally flows through forests. The anthropomorphous apes, as we have seen, build for themselves temporary platforms; this may be an untaught instinct, but as many instincts are to a certain extent largely controlled by reason, it they might readily thus gradually pass into the voluntary acts. of building a shed or wigwam. The Orang is known to cover itself at night with the leaves of the Pandanus, when the weather is cold; & Brehm states that one of his baboons used to sometimes protected themselves himself from the hot sun by mats. throwing mats throwing a straw-mat [over] their shoulders his head. In these several habits, we

[24v]

& protected

a straw-mat

over their shoulders his head. In these several habits, we probably see the first dawning steps of some of the simpler acts, of architecture & dress, as they probably occurred to the early progenitors of man.)