It may be stated here that we are not very rigid about periods or climates, and that our long-ago people are of a generalised type.  Our business is not to supply correct information on anthropological questions, but to call forth thought and originality, to present opportunities for closer observation than was ever evoked by observation lessons, and for experiments full of meaning and full of zest.  Naturally we do not despise correct information, but these children are very young and all this work is tentative.  We are never dogmatic, it is all “Do you think they might have ...” or “Well, I know what I should have done; I should have ...” and the teacher’s reply is usually “Suppose we try.”

Children are apt of course to make startling remarks, but it is only the teacher who is startled by:  “Was all this before God’s birthday?” “I don’t think God had learned to be very clever then.”  It is a curious fact, but orthodox opinion has only twice in the course of many years brought up Adam and Eve.  Probably this is because we never talk about the first man, but about how things were discovered.  The first time the question did come up Miss Payne was taking the subject, and she suggested that Adam and Eve were never in this country, which disposed of difficulties so well that I gave the same answer the only time I ever had to deal with the question.

When we come to the problem of fire, we always use parts of Miss Dopp’s story of The Tree-Dwellers.  If the children are asked if they ever heard of fire that comes by itself, or of things being burned by fire that no human being had anything to do with, one or two are sure to suggest lightning.  They will tell that lightning sometimes sets trees on fire, that thunderstorms generally come after hot dry weather, and that if lightning struck a tree with dry stuff about the fire would spread, and the long-ago people would run away.  A question from the teacher as to what these people might think about it may bring the suggestion of a monster; if not, one only has to say that it must have seemed as if it was eating the trees to get “They would think it was a dreadful animal.”  Then the story can be told of how the boy called Bodo stopped to look and saw the monster grow smaller, so he went closer, fed it on wood, and liked to feel its warm breath after the heavy rain that follows thunder—­why had the monster grown smaller?—­found that no animal would come near it and so on.  We never tell of the “fire country,” though sometimes the children read the book for themselves a little later.

We have never succeeded in making flames, but it is thrilling to get sparks from flint.  Once a child brought an old tinder box with steel and flint, but even then we were not skilful enough to get up a flame.  Still it is something to have tried, and we are left with a respectful admiration for those who could so easily do without matches.