44 BULLETIN 141, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



culture. It will be seen that progress in the arts will differ in the 

 respective tribes. 



The lamj), on account of the fuel, the wick, the need, and the 

 knowledge used in its invention, is extremely complex. Although 

 the rude lamp may seem simple, all these requisites are present in 

 its make-up. It follows that the lamp is a newcomer compared with 

 the torch. It also appears that the lamp, on account of its deceptive 

 simplicit}^, and in reality its complexity of invention, as mentioned, 

 would arise only when advance had been made to a certain grade of 

 culture. This would imply that the lamp originated in a few favored 

 places, while the torch might originate at any camp fire in the world. 

 As to the antiquity of the lamp, the evidence so far furnished points 

 to the Mediterranean culture area, the eastern portion, where the 

 oldest examples have been found. The lamps discovered by Howard 

 Carter and his efficient coworkers in the tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen 

 are float lamps and sometimes are combined with a torch stand. As 

 told by Doctor Breasted, the find dates 3,250 years ago. In the 

 Assyro-Babylonian region a lamp shaped like a boot, having a chan- 

 nel cut from the instep to the toe, can be traced 3,400 years. These 

 are the oldest lamps which can be dated. The actual origin of each 

 of these lamps is much farther in the past. 



As to the inventions, or rather light usages, standing about the 

 origin of the lamp, there are the making of a quasi lamp of the fat 

 body of the petrel and of the candlefish, and, nearer to nature, the 

 firefly lamps. The bird and fish have been placed at the beginning 

 of the torch, not as a scientific contribution to origin but as sugges- 

 tions (p. 2). The firefly lighting may be placed nearer in sug- 

 gestiveness to the lamp because something must be devised to con- 

 tain the insects, but the container is rather a lantern. This interest- 

 ing episode in illumination having no bearing on the development of 

 illumination is the only example of the use of a natural light by 

 man. In the tropical parts of the new world a large beetle, Pyro- 

 phm^us noctiluciis, 1 to 1% inches long, furnishes a remarkably 

 brilliant light. A constant light is emitted by two circular areas 

 on the thorax and a poAverful intermittent flash from the abdomen. 

 In the range of this insect the inhabitants make many recorded 

 uses of the light of the pyrophore, "light bearer." One of the 

 oldest specimens in the Museum collection is a firefly lantern from 

 the West Indies. It is in three circular diminishing stories made 

 by setting small rods in square pieces of wood with truncated cor- 

 ners and leaving a door in each story. The lantern is suspended by 

 a hook. (Cat. No. 5631, West Indies; John Varden; 15.1 inches 

 (38.5 cm.) high; pi. 40, fig. 7.) Another specimen is a jicara or 

 tree gourd perforated and furnished with a cord for suspension and 

 a rude door. This is such a specimen mentioned by Humboldt, wlio 



