But there was no absolute point of separation, as far as the material universe is concerned, to mark the dawn of a new ‘creative period’; and the _Homo Darwiniensis_ made by the Aristotle of our age, the greatest of English naturalists, is directly connected with the _Homo sapiens_. There are hosts of imitative animals, birds as well as beasts; but the copying-power is essentially limited. Moreover, it is ‘instinctive,’ the work of the undeveloped, as opposed to ‘reasoning,’ the process of the highly-developed brain and nervous system. Whilst man has taught himself to articulate, to converse, the dog, which only howled and whined, has learned nothing except to bark. Man, again, is capable of a development whose bounds we are unable to determine; whereas the beast, incapable of self-culture, progresses, under the most favourable circumstances, automatically and within comparatively narrow bounds. Upon the imitative faculty and its exercise I must dwell at greater length. It is regretable that the delicious wisdom of Pope neglected to point out the great lesson of the animal-world in suggesting and supplying the arts of offence and defence:— Go, from the creatures thy instructions take... Thy arts of building from the bee receive; Learn from the mole to plough, the worm to weave; Learn from the little nautilus to sail, Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.[18] Man, especially in the tropical and sub-tropical zones—his early, if not his earliest, home, long ago whelmed beneath the ocean waves—would derive many a useful hint from the dreadful armoury of equinoctial vegetation; the poison-trees, the large strong spines of the Acacia and the Mimosa, _e.g._ the Wait-a-bit (_Acacia detinens_), the Gleditschia, the Socotrine Aloe, the American Agave, and the piercing thorns of the _Caryota urens_, and certain palms. The aboriginal races would be further instructed in offensive and defensive arts by the powerful and destructive _feræ_ of the sunny river-plains, where the Savage was first induced to build permanent abodes. [Heading: _DISTRIBUTION OF WEAPONS._] Before noting the means of attack and protection which Nature suggested, we may distribute Hoplology, the science of arms and weapons of offence and defence, human and bestial, into two great orders, of which the latter can be subdivided into four species:— 1. _Missile._ 2. _Armes d’hast._—_a._ Percussive or striking; _b._ Thrusting, piercing, or ramming; _c._ Cutting or ripping; _d._ Notched or serrated. Colonel A. Lane Fox (‘Prim. Warfare,’ p. 11) thus classifies the weapons of ‘Animals and Savages’:—