Page:The Kinematics of Machinery.djvu/620

 598 NOTES.

These accounts are clear and intelligible peculiarities with which, un- fortunately, we cannot always credit the corresponding descriptions of other travellers. It is much to be desired that expeditions to remote parts of the world should attach greater importance to objective observation of the technical industries of the natives, and should make their descriptions of these as full and accurate as possible, and unmixed with subjective addi- tions. The fire-producing apparatus of these people is one of their most interesting possessions ; it is in most cases of extremely great antiquity, and has formed the first step towards their other industrial operations. Many methods of fire producing have indeed been observed which have escaped the notice of writers on technical subjects. I may mention briefly three which have been orally described to me by esteemed friends.

Herr Jagor found the Malays employing the following method. A piece of dry bamboo, a foot long, is split up lengthways, and the tender inside bark which forms its inner coating is scraped together into a little ball in the middle of one of the halves. This half is then placed on the ground with the hollow side (and the little ball) downwards. The worker then splits so much away from the other half as to make it into a sharp-edged straight piece like a knife- blade. This he draws like a saw or file across the middle of the first piece, in which he has perhaps previously cut a little notch. This notch is widened and deepened by the sawing, and its edges get so hot that when at last a hole is made through the cane, the little ball of pith within catches fire.

Prof. Neumeyer saw a similar process used in New Holland. Instead of bamboo, wood was there used, and wherever it was possible a split log was used for the fixed piece. Some easily-kindled pith or other material was placed in the crack, and the process went on as above described.

Consul Lindau witnessed the following method of making fire in the Sandwich Islands. Some little stones of a kind which give sparks when struck together were placed, along with easily ignitable leaves, in a box formed from a large dry leaf, and then fastened to the end of a switch. This was twirled round in the air in a particular manner with great skill, so that the stones rattled against each other and the leaves caught fire.

The question of the invention or discovery of fire is not yet cleared up. Peschel in his excellent VolkerJcunde (1874) deprecates premature conclusions on account of the scarcity of available material. Caspari (Urgeschichte der Menschheitj 1873) develops fully and carefully the hypothesis that the use of the borer may have led to its discovery, and his hypothesis is repeated and treated at great length in Baer-Hellwald's Vorgeschichtliche Mensch (p. 554 et seq.*). Here some very remarkable survivals of primitive customs are pointed out as having been observed in Germany and England in the kindling of beacon-fires, and in Appenzell (Switzerland) as a child's play. (See Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, Berlin, 1859 ; Caspari, as above, vol. i. p. 37 ; Schwarz, Ursprung der Mytholbgie, 1860, p. 142.) Herr Kuhn says that the case at Essede, among the Hanoverians, described by him, is not the only one which he has seen. The fire was lit by means of a horizontal pole, the ends of which were pivoted in hollows in two upright posts. In one of these hollows tow was placed, and this was kindled by twirling the pole rapidly in both directions. This was done by a cord twisted round it, pulled at both ends by men.

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