or him to use both animal
and vegetable food. Primarily, with equal satisfaction the procuring
of food must have been rather an individual than a social function.
Each individual sought his own breakfast wherever he might find it. It
was true then, as now, that people proceeded to the breakfast table in
an aggregation, and flocked around the centres of food supply; so we
may assume the picture of man stealing away alone, picking fruits,
nuts, berries, gathering clams or fish, was no more common than the
fact of present-day man getting his own breakfast alone. The main
difference is that in the former condition individuals obtained the
food as nature left it, and passed it directly from the bush or tree to
the mouth, while in modern times thousands of people have been working
indirectly to make it possible for a man to wait on himself.

Jack London, in his _Before Adam_, gives a very interesting picture of
the tribe going out to the carrot field for its breakfast, each
individual helping himself. However, such an aggregation around a
common food supply must eventually lead to co-operative economic
methods. But we do find even among modern living tribes of low degree
of culture the group following the food quest, whether it be to the
carrot patch, the nut-bearing trees, the sedgy seashore for mussels and
clams, the lakes for wild rice, or to the forest and plains where
abound wild game.

We find it difficult to think otherwise than that the place of man's
first appearance was one abounding in edible fruits. This fact arises
from the study of man's nature and evidences of the location of his
first appearance, together with the study of climate and vegetation.
There are a good many suggestions also that man in his primitive
condition was prepared for a vegetable diet, and indications are that
later he acquired use of meat as food. Indeed, the berries and edible
roots of {85} certain regions are in sufficient quantity to sustain
life throughout a greater part of the year. The weaker tribes of
California at the time of the first European invaders, and for many
centuries previous, found a greater part of their sustenance in edible
roots extracted from the soil, in nuts, seeds of wild grains, and
grasses. It is true they captured a little wild game, and in certain
seasons many of them made excursions to the ocean or frequented the
streams for fish or shell-fish, but their chief diet was vegetable. It
must be remembe