beings, like the African pygmy and the Indian of Brazil, who are
little beyond the orang-outang as regards the character of the shelter
they construct out of vegetation. From such crude beginnings, on a par
with the lairs and nests of lower animals, have evolved the grass huts of
the Zulu, the bamboo dwelling of the Malay, the igloo of the Arctic
tribes, and the mud house of the desert Indians. The modern palace and
apartment are merely more complex and more elaborate in material and
architectural plan, when compared with their primitive antecedents.

Baskets, clay vessels, and other household articles testify in the same
way to an evolution of the mental views of the people making them. The
means of transportation are even more demonstrative. The wagon of the
early Briton was like a rough ox-cart of the present day, evolved from the
simple sledge as a beginning. In its turn it has served as a prototype for
all the conveyances on wheels such as the stage-coach and the modern
Pullman. The history of locomotives, employed in the first chapter to
develop a clear conception of what evolution means, takes its place here
as a demonstration of the way human ideas about traction have themselves
evolved so as to render the construction of such mechanisms possible.

The primitive savage swimming in the sea found that a floating log
supported his weight as he rested from his efforts. By the strokes of his
arms or of a club in his hand, he could propel this log in a desired
direction; thus the dugout canoe arose, to be steadied by the outrigger as
the savage enlarged his experience. A cloth held aloft aided his progress
down or across the wind, and it became an integral element of the sailing
craft, which evolved through the stages of the galley and caravel to the
schooner and frigate of modern times. When the steam-engine was invented
and incorporated in the boat, a new line of evolution was initiated,
leading from the "Clermont" to the "Lusitania" and the battleship.

The history of clothing begins with the employment of an animal's hide or
a branch of leaves to protect the body from the sun's heat or the cold
winds. Other early beginnings of the more elaborate decorative clothing
are discerned by anthropologists in the scars made upon the arms and
breast as in the case of the Australian black man, and in the figured
patterns of tattooing, so remarkably developed by the natives in the
islands of the South Pacific Ocean. A visit