_The Earth's Story: I_ THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN FREDERIC ARNOLD KUMMER [Illustration] [Illustration: AFTER MOTHER NATURE HAD SENT HEAT AWAY TO MELT UP SOME OTHER WORLDS, SHE CALLED FOR HIS BROTHER, COLD, AND COLD CAME RUSHING UP, HIS GREAT WHITE WINGS GLITTERING WITH FROST.] _The Earth's Story: I_ THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN AS NARRATED QUITE SIMPLY FOR YOUNG READERS BY FREDERIC ARNOLD KUMMER ILLUSTRATED [Illustration] NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY THE FIRST DAYS OF MAN. II PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [Illustration] ACKNOWLEDGMENT THE Author desires to express his thanks to Dr. William K. Gregory, of the American Museum of Natural History, as well as to the other Museum authorities, for their courtesy and assistance in the matter of illustrations, and in the preparation of the text. The book does not pretend, of course, to be a strictly scientific work. Many liberties have been taken, in order to render the subject interesting to the youthful mind. Man's early inventions did not come about so simply as is pictured in the various chapters. But the development of civilisation is a romance, and only by so treating it can we hope to enlist the interest of the young reader. It is sufficient that the story rests upon a foundation of fact. [Illustration] PREFACE FOR PARENTS EVERY child, between the ages of five and fifteen, seeks by constant questioning to grasp the fundamental facts upon which our whole fabric of present-day knowledge is based. These facts, painfully gathered by the human race during its many centuries of development, must of necessity be absorbed by the child within the short space of some ten or twelve years. It is a prodigious task, and one in which the growing mind should be afforded every possible assistance. Two courses are usually adopted by parents; one, to dismiss the child's questions with the stock phrase, "You are not old enough to understand," the other, to place in his hands some so-called book of knowledge, containing, it is true, a great mass of information which the child should possess, but usually so badly presented, so jumbled together, that no one fact has any bearing on another, and thus the child is left to turn from "Why the ocean is salt?" to "What is a lightning rod?" without the least understanding of the principles and laws which underly these and all other facts, and link them together in a composite whole.