I quoted above, man is rather, in the sense in
which I am now speaking, the domesticated animal. He has been inducted
into the family. The estufas of the Pueblo Indians and the men's
clubhouses in Africa represent the failure of men to assimilate
completely in a society which was essentially female in its genius,
and the club still stands for a difference in interest between the
male and the female.

From the house, or shelter, as a base, woman got such connections with
food as she might. For it is an error to suppose that she was in the
most primitive times entirely dependent on man for food. She appears
to have been quite as active in developing food surroundings in her
way as man was in his. The plant world gave her the best returns for
the effort which she could make. She beat out the seeds of plants,
digged out the roots and tubers which the monkeys and pigs were seen
to grub for most eagerly,[174] strained the poisonous juices from the
cassava and made bread of the residue, and it was under her attention
that a southern grass was developed into what we know as Indian corn.
Looking back on this process, we call it the domestication of plants,
and we are likely to regard it as a more conscious process than it
really was. It was the result of her conversion to her own uses
of the most available portion of her environment. In view of her
physiological habit, the animal environment was, for the most part,
out of the question, and her attention was of necessity directed to
the plant side. While less remunerative in its beginnings than
the animal side of the process, it was, perhaps, at all times less
precarious and uncertain, and we find in consequence that the economic
dependence of man on woman is as evident as her dependence on him.
A dinner of herbs is a humbler resort than a roast of antelope, but
there was less doubt that it would be forthcoming, and primitive man
was often, when in hard luck, dependent on the activities of his wife,
or the females of the group.

The domestication of animals appears similarly to be the following-up
by man of his connections with animal life, when this life began to
be less abundant. It is probable that the practice originated in
the habit of taking the young of animals home as pets, and there is
apparently a point of difference between the attention of the men and
the women given to animals once taken into the household. The men
were interested in these animals as reviving in me