Page:Firemaking Apparatus in the U.S. National Museum.djvu/65

 FIRE-MAKING APPARATUS. 577 other details are correct, but they say they took two pieces of quartz, rubbed them with sulphur, and struck them together. It is well knowu that pieces of quartz even when rubbed with sulphur will not strike a spark of sufficient heat to cause ignition. The pieces used must have been pyritiferous quartz as noticed by Mr. L. M. Turner. To resume, the following facts arise out of the foregoing considera- tions of the flint and pyrites method: (1) It is very ancient, inferring from the few reliable finds of pyrites and flint in juxtaposition. (2) Its distribution is among high northern tribes, both Eskimo and Indian. (3) As far as known, its range is limited to this area, only one other instance coming to our notice, that of the Fuegians. . FLINT AND STEEL. The flint and pyrites method is the ancestor of the flint and steel. The latter method came in with the Iron Age. It is found in the early settlements of that period. A steel for striking fire was found, in the pile dwellings of the Ueberl inger See.* The Archaeological Department of the Museum has a specimen of a strike-a-light of the early age of iron in Scandinavia. It is a flat, oval quartz stone with a groove around the edge; it is thought to be for holding a strap by which it could be held up and struck along the flat surface with the steel. It is scored on these surfaces. The specimen in the Smithsonian is from the national museum at Stockholm. In Egypt it is believed to have been used for a long period, though there is no data at hand to support the conclusion.! In China it has been in use for many centuries. Chinese history, however, goes back to the use of sticks of wood. The briquet must have been carried nearly everywhere by early commerce from the ancient countries around the Mediterranean, as it was into new lands by later commerce. Many persons remember the tinder-box that was taken froni its warm nook beside the fire-place whenever a light was wanted; the matches tipped with sulphur used to start a blaze from the glowing tin- der are also familiar to the older generation. The tinder-boxes in use in this country were just like those in England from time immemorial down to fifty years ago (fig. 48). Mr. Edward Lovett, of Croydon, England, who has studied this matter thoroughly, calls attention to the resemblance of the old English tinder-flints to the neolithic scrapers. These scrapers, picked up at Brandon, can scarcely be discriminated from those made at the present time at that place, and there is a sus- picion that the present tinder-flint has come down directly from neo- t Sir J. W. Dawsou gives an interesting account of the strike-a-ligbt flints used ia Egypt in 1844, in Modern Science in Bible Lands, p. 30. H. Mis. 142, pt. 2 37
 * Keller.— Swiss Lake Dwellings. PI. xxviii, fig. 29.