[Illustration: The Lone Wolf (_See page 61_)] _Days Before History_ _UNIFORM WITH THIS BOOK_ In Nature’s School _By_ LILIAN GASK _With Sixteen exquisite Full-page Illustrations and a Title-page Design_ _By_ DOROTHY HARDY THIS STORY details the experiences of a sensitive boy who, in a moment of revolt, flees from the oppression of some cruel schoolfellows into the woods, where he meets Nature, who takes him round the world and shows to him her kingdom of fur and feather. The child is introduced to all manner of beasts and birds, and learns valuable lessons of kindness and toleration, while at the same time the facts of natural history are not distorted to serve the purpose of a story. Everything is true to facts, so far as they are known from observation and from the best authorities. The Illustrations are of quite unusual merit, and will establish the claims of this talented artist to a place amongst the best English interpreters of animal life. DAYS BEFORE HISTORY BY H·R·HALL WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A·M·RANDALL [Illustration] George·G·Harrap·&·Co 15 York Street·Covent Garden London _FIRST EDITION November 1906, 5000; December 1907, 5000._ _SECOND EDITION Revised, Enlarged, and Newly Illustrated, September 1908, 3000._ _Letchworth; At the Arden Press_ _Preface to the New Edition_ IN a book of this kind nothing more will be expected than an outline sketch of some phases of the life lived by the prehistoric dwellers in our land. The known facts are few; yet there must have been, even in those far-away times, well-defined differences of habit and custom due to local circumstances; so that details more or less true of one tribe or group would possibly be quite untrue of others. But, for all that, there are various conclusions upon which the learned may be considered to be in agreement; and, working from these and from the descriptions of primitive life in our own times, there is brought within our reach the possibility of constructing a picture of man in early Britain which, without leaving the lines of reasonable conjecture, need be neither meagre nor misleading. An attempt has been made here to introduce only descriptions which can in some degree be vouched for; and as much of such authenticated detail as possible has been included. Some licence has been taken in bringing together events which in nature were, no doubt, separated by long intervals of time and space; in suggesting, for instance, that a man of the newer stone age might have heard some vague tradition of the makers of the old stone weapons, and yet, in his lifetime, have witnessed the incoming of the first weapons of bronze: yet, for the sake of picturesqueness, such licence may be considered to be not only permissible but, in a book with the purpose of this, actually desirable.