 and deficiency of food; the strong and
capable survived, gained superior powers, devised new weapons and
implements, and became adapted to a new and decidedly adverse situation.
From long depending, in considerable measure, on his physical powers,
man came to trust more fully than before in his mental faculties, the
result being a much greater variation in the size and activity of his
brain than in other portions of his physical structure. While it had
become more difficult to find and capture food animals, he was at the
same time in greater danger from carnivorous beasts, which were forced
by partial starvation to overcome their dread of man. He was thus
obliged to become as alert and ready in defence as he was in attack, to
associate himself more fully with his fellows in his hunting excursions
and his other labors, and to adapt the forms and forces of nature still
more to his needs, his career as a tool-making animal being greatly
stimulated by the necessities of his situation.

It is conceivable that the art of agriculture may have been one of the
outcomes of the situation in which man now found himself. The decrease
in the food supply must have put all his powers of invention to the
test, and the probable diminution in number and productiveness of food
plants may have served as an instigation to the cultivation of useful
plants, and the preservation of their products, where possible, for
winter supply. It is not unlikely that in this way and under this
stimulation agriculture began, and that it made its way subsequently
from this locality to more southern regions. In this, however, we cannot
go beyond conjecture.

It seems useless to pursue this topic further, since the absence of
facts forces us to confine ourselves largely to suggestions and
probabilities. We have arrived at two definite hypotheses: first, that
the original stage of man's progress upward from the apes was completed
when he gained dominion over the animal kingdom and attained the
condition of the forest pygmies; second, that an advanced st