Women were, in the light of anthropology, as well as in that of mythology and tradition, the first to discover the nutritive and medicinal values of fruits, seeds, nuts, roots and vegetables. They were consequently the first gardeners and agriculturists and the first to build up a materia medica. While men were engaged in the chase or in warfare, women were gradually perfecting those divers domestic arts which, in the course of time, became their recognized specialties. They soon found that it was better to cultivate certain food plants and trees than to depend on them for nourishment in the wild state. This was particularly true in the case of such useful and widely distributed species as wheat, rice, maize, the yam, potato, banana and cassava. At first most of these food products were used in the raw state, but woman's quick inventive genius was not long in making one of the most important and far-reaching discoveries--a method for producing fire. In a certain sense this was the greatest discovery ever made, and the Greeks showed their appreciation of the value of it by asserting that fire was stolen from heaven. Considering its multifarious uses in heating and cooking, thereby immensely adding to the comfort and well-being of primitive man, we are not surprised that in certain parts of the world fire has always been considered something sacred, and that the old Romans instituted Vestal Virgins, and the ancient Peruvians Virgins of the Sun, to preserve this precious element and have it ever ready when required for sacrifice or for any of their various liturgical functions. If any one ever deserved a "monument more durable than bronze," it was the woman who, "on the edge of time," first drew the Promethean spark from a piece of pyrites by striking it with flint or produced it by the friction of two pieces of wood. After building a home and establishing in it a fireplace for the preparation of food, woman's next concern was to secure more raiment than was afforded by the traditional fig leaf. This she found in the bark of certain trees, in the fiber of hemp and cotton and in the wool of sheep and goats. With these and her distaff she spun thread, and from the thread thus obtained she was by means of her primitive loom--likewise her invention--able to provide all kinds of textile fabrics for clothing for herself and family.