6 BULLETIN 141, UITITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



the great auk, Pinguinis impennis, an extinct bird of the North 

 Atlantic, were sometimes used for fuel and incidentally for light. 

 So far as may be ascertained the petrel and auk are the only birds 

 which were employed within recent times for illumination. Joly in 

 his work, Man before Metals, states that the Danes of the Mitchen- 

 middens employed a wick of moss, one end of which was buried in 

 the stomach of a great penguin {Pinguinis irnpennis) which is laden 

 with fat (p. 197). Fish have been so used, the most striking in- 

 stance being the candle fish, Thaleicthys paciflcus^ called eulachon, a 

 salmonoid surf fish of the northwest coast of America. Quite gen- 

 erally the Indians along this coast used the candle fish for light. 

 The candle fish is excessively fat. The custom was to place a dried 

 eulachon in the cleft of a split stick and apply a light. It is 

 doubtful whether a wick was necessary. One observer mentions 

 the use of a bark wick, thus bringing the device nearer to a primi- 

 tive candle. (PL 4a, fig. 2; Cat. No. 178161; Walter Hough.) Dr. 

 C. A. Q. Norton informed the writer that the Penobscot Indians 

 of Maine pursued the same method with suckers taken from the 

 river. The use of fish as fuel is more common and was no doubt 

 a customary source of light. The tail of the dogfish was cut into 

 strips and burned for light off the banks of Newfoundland by 

 fishermen. The mutton fish, which was captured off the coast of 

 New Zealand, was used as a torch. The informant, I. B. Millner, 

 has observed this use. Dr. Franz Boas informs me that the Kwa- 

 kiutl Indians of Fort Rupert, British Columbia, threw fish oil from 

 a kelp-weed bag onto the fire to produce a temporary bright light. 

 One of these bags of the tubular sea weed, in flattened condition, 

 from the Makah Indians, Neah Bay, Wash., is in the museum. 

 (Cat. No. 73753; James G. Swan.) 



The torch proper is taken up at the stage when materials were 

 aggregated into a definite form for the particular use — in other 

 words, a manufactured product. This may result quite simply as a 

 palm leaf crushed into a bundle and dried. (PI. 1, fig. 1, Cat. No. 

 209351, Philippines; Gen. J. M. Bell.) This device has, however, 

 a suggested primitive phase of industrial beginnings. In the area 

 of distribution of the large grasses it is quite natural that bundles of 

 canes should be tied together and used as a torch in many places. 

 The Peabody Museum, at Cambridge, Mass., has such a contrivance 

 from a prehistoric cave deposit in Kentucky. (Cat. No. 150845.) 

 In the Truk Group, Caroline Islands, a bundle of natural canes 

 tied with strips of vegetal material served as a torch. (PI. 45, fig. 1, 

 Cat. No. 206274; F. H. Moore; 24.8 inches (63 cm.) long.) In the 

 East Indies split bamboo torches were used by fishermen and others. 

 One of these, from Mindanao, southern Philippines, is shown in 



