Chapter the First
THE PRIMITIVE VEHICLE
“This is a traveller, sir, knows men and
Manners, and has plough’d up sea so far,
Till both the poles have knock’d; has seen the sun
Take coach, and can distinguish the colour
Of his horses, and their kinds.”
Beaumont and Fletcher.
IT has been suggested that although in a generality of cases nature has forestalled the ingenious mechanician, man for his wheel has had to evolve an apparatus which has no counterpart in his primitive environment—in other words, that there is nothing in nature which corresponds to the wheel. Yet even the most superficial inquiry into the nature of the earliest vehicles must do much to refute such a suggestion. Primitive wheels were simply thick logs cut from a tree-trunk, probably for firewood. At some time or another these logs must have rolled of their own accord from a higher to a lower piece of ground, and from man’s observation of this simple phenomenon must have come the first idea of a wheel. If a round object could roll of its own accord, it could also be made to roll.