played with elephants as a full grown cat plays with her kittens.
Some of the members of this reptilian family began to live in

the tops of the trees, which were then often more than a hundred
feet high. They no longer needed their legs for the purpose

of walking, but it was necessary for them to move quickly from
branch to branch. And so they changed a part of their skin

into a sort of parachute, which stretched between the sides of
their bodies and the small toes of their fore-feet, and gradually

they covered this skinny parachute with feathers and made
their tails into a steering gear and flew from tree to tree and

developed into true birds.
Then a strange thing happened. All the gigantic reptiles

died within a short time. We do not know the reason. Perhaps
it was due to a sudden change in climate. Perhaps they

had grown so large that they could neither swim nor walk nor
crawl, and they starved to death within sight but not within

reach of the big ferns and trees. Whatever the cause, the
million year old world-empire of the big reptiles was over.

The world now began to be occupied by very different
creatures. They were the descendants of the reptiles but they

were quite unlike these because they fed their young from the
``mammae'' or the breasts of the mother. Wherefore modern

science calls these animals ``mammals.'' They had shed the
scales of the fish. They did not adopt the feathers of the bird,

but they covered their bodies with hair. The mammals however
developed other habits which gave their race a great advantage

over the other animals. The female of the species
carried the eggs of the young inside her body until they were

hatched and while all other living beings, up to that time, had
left their children exposed to the dangers of cold and heat,

and the attacks of wild beasts, the mammals kept their young
with them for a long time and sheltered them while they were

still too weak to fight their enemies. In this way the young
mammals were given a much better chance to survive, because

they learned many things from their mothers, as you will know
if you have ever watched a cat teaching her kittens to take

care of themselves and how to wash their faces and how to
catch mice.

But of these mammals I need not tell you much for you
know them well. They surround you on all sides. They are

your daily companions in the streets and in your home, and you
can see your less familiar cousins behind the bars of the zoological

garden.
And now we come to the parting of the ways when man

suddenly leaves the endless procession of dumbly living and
dying creatures and begins to use his reason to shape the

destiny of his race.
One mammal in particular seemed to surpass all others in

its ability to find food and shelter. It had learned to use its
fore-feet for the purpose of holding its prey, and by dint of

practice it had developed a hand-like claw. After innumerable
attempts it had learned how to balance the whole of the

body upon the hind legs. (This is a difficult act, which every
child has to learn anew although the human race has been

doing it for over a million years.)
This creature, half ape and half monkey but superior to

both, became the most successful hunter and could make a
living in every clime. For greater safety, it usually moved

about in groups. It learned how to make strange grunts to
warn its young of approaching danger and after many hundreds

of thousands of years it began to use these throaty noises
for the purpose of talking.

This creature, though you may hardly believe it, was your
first ``man-like'' ancestor.

OUR EARLIEST ANCESTORS
WE know very little about the first ``true'' men. We have

never seen their pictures. In the deepest layer of clay of an
ancient soil we have sometimes found pieces of their bones.

These lay buried amidst the broken skeletons of other animals
that have long since disappeared from the face of the earth.

Anthropologists (learned scientists who devote their lives to
the study of man as a member of the animal kingdom) have

taken these bones and they have been able to reconstruct our
earliest ancestors with a fair degree of accuracy.

The great-great-grandfather of the human race was a very
ugly and unattractive mammal. He was quite small, much

smaller than the people of today. The heat of the sun and the
biting wind of the cold winter had coloured his skin a dark

brown. His head and most of his body, his arms and legs too,
were covered with long, coarse hair. He had very thin but

strong fingers which made his hands look like those of a monkey.
His forehead was low and his jaw was like the jaw of a

wild animal which uses its teeth both as fork and knife. He
wore no clothes. He had seen no fire except the flames of the

rumbling volcanoes which filled the earth with their smoke
and their lava.

He lived in the damp blackness of vast forests, as the
pygmies of Africa do to this very day. When he felt the

pangs of hunger he ate raw leaves and the roots of plants or
he took the eggs away from an angry bird and fed them to his

own young. Once in a while, after a long and patient chase,
he would catch a sparrow or a small wild dog or perhaps a

rabbit. These he would eat raw for he had never discovered
that food tasted better when it was cooked.

During the hours of day, this primitive human being
prowled about looking for things to eat.

When night descended upon the earth, he hid his wife and
his children in a hollow tree or behind some heavy boulders,

for he was surrounded on all sides by ferocious animals and
when it was dark these animals began to prowl about, looking

for something to eat for their mates and their own young, and
they liked the taste of human beings. It was a world where

you must either eat or be eaten, and life was very unhappy
because it was full of fear and misery.

In summer, man was exposed to the scorching rays of the
sun, and during the winter his children would freeze to death

in his arms. When such a creature hurt itself, (and hunting
animals are forever breaking their bones or spraining their

ankles) he had no one to take care of him and he must die a
horrible death.

Like many of the animals who fill the Zoo with their
strange noises, early man liked to jabber. That is to say, he

endlessly repeated the same unintelligible gibberish because it
pleased him to hear the sound of his voice. In due time he

learned that he could use this guttural noise to warn his fellow
beings whenever danger threatened and he gave certain little

shrieks which came to mean ``there is a tiger!'' or ``here come
five elephants.'' Then the others grunted something back at

him and their growl meant, ``I see them,'' or ``let us run away
and hide.'' And this was probably the origin of all language.

But, as I have said before, of these beginnings we know
so very little. Early man had no tools and he built himself

no houses. He lived and died and left no trace of his existence
except a few collar-bones and a few pieces of his skull.

These tell us that many thousands of years ago the world was
inhabited by certain mammals who were quite different from

all the other animals--who had probably developed from another
unknown ape-like animal which had learned to walk on

its hind-legs and use its fore-paws as hands--and who were
most probably connected with the creatures who happen to be

our own immediate ancestors.
It is little enough we know and the rest is darkness.

PREHISTORIC MAN
PREHISTORIC MAN BEGINS TO MAKE

THINGS FOR HIMSELF.
EARLY man did not know what time meant. He kept

no records of birthdays or wedding anniversaries or the hour
of death. He had no idea of days or weeks or even years.

But in a general way he kept track of the seasons for he had
noticed that the cold winter was invariably followed by the mild

spring--that spring grew into the hot summer when fruits
ripened and the wild ears of corn were ready to be eaten and

that summer ended when sudden gusts of wind swept the leaves
from the trees and a number of animals were getting ready

for the long hibernal sleep.
But now, something unusual and rather frightening had

happened. Something was the matter with the weather. The
warm days of summer had come very late. The fruits had

not ripened. The tops of the mountains which used to be covered
with grass now lay deeply hiddenunderneath a heavy

burden of snow.
Then, one morning, a number of wild people, different

from the other creatures who lived in that neighbourhood, came
wandering down from the region of the high peaks. They

looked lean and appeared to be starving. They uttered sounds
which no one could understand. They seemed to say that

they were hungry. There was not food enough for both the
old inhabitants and the newcomers. When they tried to stay

more than a few days there was a terrible battle with claw-like
hands and feet and whole families were killed. The others fled

back to their mountain slopes and died in the next blizzard.
But the people in the forest were greatly frightened. All

the time the days grew shorter and the nights grew colder than
they ought to have been.

Finally, in a gap between two high hills, there appeared a
tiny speck of greenish ice. Rapidly it increased in size. A

giganticglacier came sliding downhill. Huge stones were
being pushed into the valley. With the noise of a dozen thunderstorms

torrents of ice and mud and blocks of granite suddenly
tumbled among the people of the forest and killed them

while they slept. Century old trees were crushed into kindling
wood. And then it began to snow.

It snowed for months and months. All the plants died and
the animals fled in search of the southern sun. Man hoisted

his young upon his back and followed them. But he could not
travel as fast as the wilder creatures and he was forced to

choose between quick thinking or quick dying. He seems to
have preferred the former for he has managed to survive the

terrible glacial periods which upon four different occasions
threatened to kill every human being on the face of the earth.

In the first place it was necessary that man clothe himself
lest he freeze to death. He learned how to dig holes and cover

them with branches and leaves and in these traps he caught
bears and hyenas, which he then killed with heavy stones and

whose skins he used as coats for himself and his family.
Next came the housing problem. This was simple. Many

animals were in the habit of sleeping in dark caves. Man now
followed their example, drove the animals out of their warm

homes and claimed them for his own.
Even so, the climate was too severe for most people and

the old and the young died at a terrible rate. Then a genius
bethought himself of the use of fire. Once, while out hunting,

he had been caught in a forest-fire. He remembered that he
had been almost roasted to death by the flames. Thus far fire

had been an enemy. Now it became a friend. A dead tree
was dragged into the cave and lighted by means of smouldering

branches from a burning wood. This turned the cave into
a cozy little room.

And then one evening a dead chicken fell into the fire. It
was not rescued until it had been well roasted. Man discovered

that meat tasted better when cooked and he then and there
discarded one of the old habits which he had shared with the

other animals and began to prepare his food.
In this way thousands of years passed. Only the people

with the cleverest brains survived. They had to struggle day
and night against cold and hunger. They were forced to invent

tools. They learned how to sharpen stones into axes and how
to make hammers. They were obliged to put up large stores

of food for the endless days of the winter and they found that
clay could be made into bowls and jars and hardened in the

rays of the sun. And so the glacial period, which had threatened
to destroy the human race, became its greatest teacher

because it forced man to use his brain.
HIEROGLYPHICS

THE EGYPTIANS INVENT THE ART OF
WRITING AND THE RECORD OF

HISTORY BEGINS
THESE earliest ancestors of ours who lived in the great

European wilderness were rapidly learning many new things.
It is safe to say that in due course of time they would have

given up the ways of savages and would have developed a
civilisation of their own. But suddenly there came an end to

their isolation. They were discovered.
A traveller from an unknown southland who had dared to

cross the sea and the high mountain passes had found his way
to the wild people of the European continent. He came from

Africa. His home was in Egypt.
The valley of the Nile had developed a high stage of civilisation

thousands of years before the people of the west had
dreamed of the possibilities of a fork or a wheel or a house.

And we shall therefore leave our great-great-grandfathers in
their caves, while we visit the southern and eastern shores of

the Mediterranean, where stood the earliest school of the