Primitive man, then, knows the fruits, seeds, and tubers, just as the squirrel, the monkey, and the parrot know them, as so much good foodstuff, suitable to his purpose. But why should he ever dream of saving or preserving some of these fruits or seeds, when he has found them, and of burying them in the soil, on the bare off-chance that by pure magic, as it were, they might give rise to others? No idea could be more foreign to the nature and {277}habits of early man. In the first place, he is far from provident; his way is to eat up at once what he has killed or picked; and in the second place, how could he ever come to conceive that seeds buried in the ground could possibly produce more seeds in future? Nay, even if he did know it--which is well-nigh impossible--would he be likely, feckless creature that he is, to save or spare a handful of seeds to-day in order that other seeds might spring from their burial-place in another twelvemonth? The difficulty is so enormous when one fairly faces it that it positively staggers one; we begin to wonder whether really, after all, the first steps in cultivation’ could ever have been taken. The savage, when he has killed a deer or a game-bird, does not bury a part of it or an egg of it in the ground, in the expectation that it will grow into more deer or more bird hereafter. Why, then, should he, when he has picked a peck of fruits or wild cereals, bury some of them in the ground, and expect a harvest? The savage is a simple and superstitious person; but I do not think he is quite such a fool as this proceeding would make him out to be. He is not likely ever to have noticed that plants in the wild state grow from seeds--at least prior to the rise of agriculture, from which, as I believe, he first and slowly gained that useful knowledge. And he certainly is not likely ever to have tried deliberate experiments upon the properties of plants, as if he were a Fellow of the Royal Society. These two roads being thus effectually blocked to us, we have to enquire, “Was there ever any way in which primitive man could have blundered blindfold upon a knowledge of the truth, and could have discovered incidentally to some other function of his life the two essential facts that plants grow from seeds, and that the growth and supply of useful food-plants can be artificially increased by burying or sowing such seeds in ground cleared of weeds, that is to say of the natural competing vegetation?”