for the food of man. Nor
was wheat their only gift. The one animal form whose type has not been
evolved on our chain of worlds is that of the bee. It, too, was
brought from Venus.

The Lemurians now also began to learn the art of spinning and weaving
fabrics with which to clothe themselves. These were made of the coarse
hair of a species of animal now extinct, but which bore some
resemblance to the llamas of to-day, the ancestors of which they may
possibly have been. We have seen above that the earliest articles of
clothing of Lemurian man were robes of skin stripped from the beasts
he had slain. These skins he still continued to wear on the colder
parts of the continent, but he now learnt to cure and dress the skin
in some rude fashion.

One of the first things the people were taught was the use of fire in
the preparation of their food, and whether it was the flesh of animals
they slew or the pounded grains of wheat, their modes of cooking were
closely analogous to those we hear of as existing to-day among savage
communities. With reference to the gift of wheat so marvellously
brought from Venus, the divine rulers doubtless realised the
advisability of at once procuring such food for the people, for they
must have known that it would take many generations before the
cultivation of the wild seeds could provide an adequate supply.

Rude and barbarous as were the people during the period of the fifth
and sixth sub-races, such of them as had the privilege of coming in
contact with their divine teachers were naturally inspired with such
feelings of reverence and worship as helped to lift them out of their
savage condition. The constant influx, too, of more intelligent beings
from the first group of the Lunar Pitris, who were then beginning to
return to incarnation, helped the attainment of a more civilised
state.

[Sidenote: Great Cities and Statues.]

During the later part of the sixth, and the seventh sub-race they
learnt to build great cities. These appear to have been of cyclopean
architecture, corresponding with the gigantic bodies of the race. The
first cities were built on that extended mountainous region of the
continent which included, as will be seen in the first map, the
present Island of Madagascar. Another great city is described in the
"Secret Doctrine"[22] as having been entirely built of blocks of lava.
It lay some 30 miles west of the present Easter Island, and it was
subsequently destroyed by a seri