ngs wild just as they are found in our gardens today. Our ancestors
grew them for many generations, gradually improving their size and
flavor. By selecting the best and carefully cultivating them, we are
still continuing to make them better.

The horse, donkey, cow, and camel proved valuable in another way to the
people who were learning to cultivate the ground. When harnessed to a
crooked and sharpened stick they aided in breaking up the ground in
which the young plants were growing.

And so the long years passed while the early people were discovering and
making use of the things around them. They came to building better and
more permanent homes, because they did not have to move from place to
place in search of food. Where there were forests, wood served for their
buildings. Where there were few trees, stone or mud bricks were used.

The brighter people learned to understand Nature more quickly than those
who were dull. Each discovery of some new way of doing things aided them
in making others, and in this way people finally came to have all the
comforts of today. Those people less quick to learn the secrets of
Nature, or those who lived in countries to which Nature had given
little, gained few comforts and even now remain savage.

After our ancestors had learned to cultivate the soil, to use the
minerals and the forests, and had tamed the animals and birds, they were
still unsatisfied. They attempted to make the forces of Nature work for
them. For a long time people made flour by crushing grain in a mortar.
Next, two flat stones were used, one being made to turn upon the other
by a handle. After that some animal, such as an ox or a horse, was
harnessed to larger stones which, as they slowly turned, ground the
grain. This was a great deal of work, and so some one thought of making
the water tumbling over a ledge of rock grind the grain for them. The
water was made to go over a water wheel. This wheel then made the
millstones go around. It was a great deal easier.

[Illustration: The wild home of early men.
_H. W. Fairbanks_]

Where there was no water power, wind was made to do the same work. A
crude windmill gathered the power of the rapidly moving air. After wind
and water had been forced to serve them, some one who had seen the lid
of a tea kettle dancing up and down, thought of using steam. Then
electricity, which in the form of jagged lightning had seemed so fearful
a thing to the early people, was harn