14 BULLETIN 141^ UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



of sheet iron with brazed joints and cast handle riveted on is from 

 British Columbia, where it is said to have been used by miners and 

 other frontiersmen and sold by the Hudson Bay Company. (PL 8«, 

 fig. 3, Cat. No. 326755, British Columbia ; Walter Hough ; 9.8 inches 

 (25 cm.) high.) An interesting torch of tin with brass wick tube 

 was used on mackerel fishing boats at Gloucester, Mass., in 1882. 

 It has a tube below for fitting on a staff. (PI. 8a, fig. 1, Cat. No. 

 54384; U. S. Fish Commission; 6.3 inches (16 cm.) diameter, 

 8.6 inches (22 cm.) high.) A heavy cast-iron torch used formerly 

 by engineers and others on railroads Avas recently received. It has 

 cast on one side "P. R. R. Bayton MaUeable Iron Co. X1028." 

 (Cat. No. 325618; Walter Hough; 9.3 inches (23.5 cm.) high.) 



CANDLE 



The crude torch and the flambeau passed out among civilized 

 peoples in the course of progress, but one of the elements of the 

 flambeau survived as the taper. This waxed or fatted cord was 

 burned in vessels like lamps or wound in a coil or on a support 

 presenting many forms due to expediency or taste. The taper was 

 very useful, and indeed still may be found on sale where fashion 

 and conservatism demand the use of sealing wax. In European 

 countries the taper still has a cult use. 



The role of the taper in the development of the candle may have 

 been important. There is probability that the southern European 

 candle had the taper as ancestor. The conditions were complete for 

 such a development. In northern Europe, however, the candle is 

 clearly a development from the fatted rush. The far eastern Asiatic 

 candle has still another origin, also using pith of the rush as a wick. 

 There are thus seen three avenues of approach to the invention of the 

 candle traceable at the present. It is not to be concluded that these 

 are all. The candle is a device which depends on conditions, prin- 

 cipally on the stage of human advance in culture, and, therefore, 

 given flocks and herds for the production of abundant suitable fats, 

 the candle may have arisen, but it must arise out of earlier uses of 

 substances for light. This combination of circumstances could have 

 assembled in the early Bronze Age among peoples favorably situated. 

 Some of the commercial tapers purchased about 35 years ago are 

 shown in Plate 8b. Figure 8 is a slender white taper wound in an 

 ingenious way to uncoil through an aperture in the holder. (Cat. 

 No. 167065, Seville, Spain; Walter Hough; 2.4 inches (6 cm.) 

 diameter.) Figure 7 is a bundle of thicker taper of unbleached bees- 

 wax from north Spain, purchased at an almacen, or store, selling 

 ecclesiastical objects. (Cat. No. 167062, Burgos, Spain; Walter 

 Hough; 1.6 inches (4 cm.) diameter, 3.1 inches (8 cm.) high.) Fig- 



