The manner of life led by man beyond the borders of higher civilisation, especially under extreme climatic conditions, depends almost exclusively on his outward surroundings and the possibility of obtaining food. The Esquimaux, who, like Drift Man of Central Europe in former times, live on the borders of eternal ice with the Drift animals that emigrated thither,--the reindeer, musk-ox, bear, Arctic fox, etc.--are restricted, like him, to hunting and fishing, and to a diet consisting almost entirely of flesh and fat; corn-growing and the keeping of herds of domestic animals being self-prohibitive. Their kitchen refuse exactly resembles that from the Drift. Before their acquaintance with the civilisation of modern Europe they used stone and bone besides driftwood for making their weapons and implements, as they still do to a certain extent at the present day, either from preference or from superstitious ideas. Their binding material consisted of threads twisted from reindeer sinews, with which they sewed their clothes and fastened their harpoons and arrows, the latter resembling in form those of Drift Man. They knew no more than he the arts of spinning and weaving, their clothes being made from the skins of the animals they hunted; pots were unknown and unnecessary to them. [Illustration: PRIMITIVE ART OF OUR OWN DAY The picture-writing of the American Indians in our own day offers an interesting parallel to that of the primitive peoples of the remotest past. The Pawnees decorate their buffalo robes with such drawings as these, representing a procession of medicine men, the foremost giving freedom to his favourite horse as a sacrifice to the Great Spirit. ] It has often been thought that we should have a definite criterion of the period if it could be proved that fresh mammoth ivory was employed at the particular time for making implements and weapons, or ornaments, carvings, and drawings. There can be no doubt that when Drift Man succeeded in killing a mammoth he used the tusks for his purposes. But on the borders of eternal ice, where alone we could now expect to find a frozen Drift Man, no conclusion could be drawn from objects of mammoth ivory being in the possession of a corpse to determine the great age of the latter. For the many mammoth tusks which have been found and used from time immemorial in North Siberia, on the New Siberian Islands, and in other places, are absolutely fresh, and are even employed in the arts of civilised countries in exactly the same way as fresh ivory. Under the name of “mammoth ivory” the fossil tusks dug up by ivory-seekers, or mammoth-hunters, form an important article of commerce.