and by the same inarticulate cries, when they are excited by various emotions.”  It naturally follows that even if there was only dancing, there must necessarily, as a form of entertainment, have also been Pantomime.  Again, all savage tribes have a war-dance of some description, in which in fighting costume they invariably go through, in Pantomimic form, the respective movements of the Challenge, the Conflict, the Pursuit, and the Defeat, whilst other members of the tribe, both men and women, give additional stimulus to these representations by a rude form of music.

The Ostyak tribe of Northern Asia give us a specimen of the rude imitative dances of early civilization in a Pantomimic exhibition of the Chase; the gambols and habits of the wolf and other wild beasts.  The Pantomimic dances of the Kamchadales are in imitation of birds, dogs, and bears; and the Damaras represent, by four of the tribe stooping down with their heads together, and uttering harsh cries, the movements of oxen, and of sheep.  The Australian Bushmen Mimic the leaping of calves, the antics of the baboon, and the buzzing of swarms of bees.  Primitive Pantomimic dancing is practised amongst the South Sea Islanders, and other races, and just as it was, presumably, at the beginning of the world.

Having briefly traced the origin of Pantomime, and the source of dancing, let us, in order to further amplify my subject, look at also for a moment the origin of music, in the time of prehistoric man.

From Nature also do we derive this art, as “The sighing of the wind passing over a bed of reeds is Nature’s first suggestion of breath,” and of music.  The clapping of hands and the stamping of feet is man’s first element in the making of music, which developed itself into the formation of drums, bells, and cymbals, and the evolution of the same primary principle.

It has been argued, and also ridiculously pretended, that in the Antediluvian period mankind only lived in caves with the hairy mammoth, the cave bear, the rhinoceros, and the hyaena, in a state of barbarous savagery; and that only since the Deluge have the Arts been known and cities built on this terrestrial sphere of ours.  Could anything be more fallacious?

We know, from the Bible, that the first man was created about six thousand years ago, and some sixteen hundred and fifty-six years afterwards the inhabitants of the world, with the exception of Noah and his family, consisting of eight souls all told, were destroyed by the flood.  Noah and his family, we can take it, were of the same race of mankind then on the earth, of the same descent and of the same flesh and blood (as we all are) of our common father and mother, Adam and Eve; yet we are not told that Noah (he was six hundred years old when he went into the Ark) and his family were savages.  In the 4th chapter, 21st verse of Genesis, of Jubal-Cain, we learn that “He was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ”; and in the following verse, Tubal-Cain is described as “An instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.”