According to Captain Hall—who, however, derived the tale from the Eskimos,[12] the sole living representatives of the palæolithic age in Europe—the polar bear, traditionally reported to throw stones, rolls down, with its quasi-human forepaws, rocks and boulders upon the walrus when found sleeping at the foot of some overhanging cliff. ‘Meister Petz’ aims at the head, and finally brains the stunned prey with the same weapon. Perhaps the account belongs to the category of the ostrich throwing stones, told by many naturalists, including Pliny (x. 1), when, as Father Lobo explained in his ‘Abyssinia,’ the bird only kicks them up during its scouring flight. Similar, too, is the exploded shooting-out of the porcupine’s quills, whereby, according to mediæval ‘Shoe-tyes’[13] men have been badly hurt and even killed. On the other hand, the Emu kicks like an Onager[14] and will drive a man from one side of a quarter-deck to the other. But though Man’s first work was to weapon himself, we must not believe with the Cynics and the Humanitarians that his late appearance in creation, or rather on the stage of life, initiated an unvarying and monotonous course of destructiveness. The great tertiary mammals which preceded him, the hoplotherium, the deinotherium, and other -theria, made earth a vast scene of bloodshed to which his feeble powers could add only a few poor horrors. And even in our day the predatory fishes, that have learned absolutely nothing from man’s inhumanity to man, habitually display as much ferocity as ever disgraced savage human nature. Primitive man—the post-tertiary animal—was doomed by the very conditions of his being and his media to a life of warfare; a course of offence to obtain his food, and of defence to retain his life. Ulysses[15] says pathetically: No thing frailer of force than Man earth breedeth and feedeth; Man ever feeblest of all on th’ Earth’s face creeping and crawling. The same sentiment occurs in the ‘Iliad’; and Pliny, the pessimist, writes—‘the only tearful animal, Man.’