To woman, the originator of the first home, is due also the invention of the oven and the chimney. She was also the first maker of salt--that all-important condiment and sanitary agent--and the first to obtain nitre from wood ashes. She was the first engineer, as is evinced in her invention of the parbuckle and in the bamboo conduit, which was the predecessor of the great canals of Babylonia[229] and the imposing aqueducts of ancient Rome. Important, however, as are all the foregoing inventions, we must not forget what was an equally important contribution by woman to the welfare and progress of our race--the domestication of animals. No discovery after that of artificially producing fire has contributed more toward the development of our race than the taming of milk- and fleece-bearing animals, like the cow, the sheep, the goat and the llama, or of burden-bearing animals, like the horse, the ass, the camel and the reindeer, or of hunting and watching animals like the faithful, ubiquitous dog. For, in the first place, the domestication of these supremely useful animals diminished man's labor as burden bearers. It likewise supplemented the fecundity of women and facilitated the multiplication of the race, because it supplied to the child a nourishment that previously could be obtained only from the mother, who had been obliged to suckle her young several years longer than was necessary after the friendly goat and cow came to her aid. Still another consequence of the domestication of animals was that it immensely diminished the amount of woman's care and labor, afforded her the necessary leisure to develop the arts of refinement, and stimulated intellectual growth in a way that otherwise would have been impossible. It is often stated by certain writers who love to indulge in fanciful speculations that women inventors got their ideas as home builders and weavers and potters from nest-building birds, from web-weaving spiders, and from clay workers like termites and mud wasps. Be this as it may, the fact remains in all its inspiring truth that, in the matter of industrialism, as opposed to the militancy of man, we can unhesitatingly declare, with Virgil, _Dux femina facti_--woman was the leader in all the arts of peace--arts which have been slowly perfected through the ages until they present the extraordinary development which we now witness.