4 BULLETIN 139, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



found a good medium for preserving fire. The Hopi Indians' fire 

 sticks were usually accompanied with a cedar-bark kopichoki.* Other 

 tribes also used the slow match. Numbers of cedar-bark slow mat- 

 ches were in a prehistoric fire temple at Mesa Verde, Colorado.^" Such 

 slow matches formed a convenient means of distributing the new fire 

 when it had been secured by friction. Austrahans carry with them 

 a cone of Banksia, which burns slowly like amadou." 



Chinese joss sticks may be a method of preserving fire. The slow 

 match is a spill of soft paper which when lighted gives a momentary 

 flame. This is blown out and the spill glows for a considerable time. 

 When a light is wanted a dexterous puff relights it. They are called 

 pei hUf a word close to the sound made in blowing up the spill. 



Preservation of the fire overnight was effected with the curfew, 

 ^'fire cover," those surviving being cones of sheet brass having a few 

 perforations and a handle. The curfew resembles a candle extin- 

 guisher, but larger and more squat. The old custom was on retiring 

 to rake the coals in the fireplace together and set over the pile the 

 curfew, which preserved the fire till the morning. 



The needs of war, hunting, and travel must have developed innum- 

 erable ways for the preserving and transportation of fire. These 

 methods are unrecorded and only little information can be derived 

 from present customs. Nevertheless, the few instances appear to 

 cover possible methods. 



The above examples also show the scope of the improvements in 

 fire preservation beyond the earliest practice of preserving coals in 

 the ashes of the camp fire. 



IGNITION POINT 



It is a wise provision of nature that the ignition point of mate- 

 rial is adjusted high and that the approximation of a substance with 

 low ignition to live fire or a spark is unusual. Directed by human 

 intelligence this feature of the fire art became of the greatest impor- 

 tance, having grown step by step from observations and experimen- 

 tations since early times. It was early observed that charred wood 

 ignites more easily than uncharred; thus charcoal ignites at 580° F. 

 and pine wood at 800° F. Tenuous vegetal material ignites easily 

 and some forms ignite with a flash. The bearing of this on the 

 selection of tinder is evident as the observation on charcoal upon the 

 making of fire by wood friction. 



» Walter Hough. The Hopi Indian Collection in the United States National Museum., Proc. U. S. 

 Nat. Mus., vol. 54, 1918, p. 242. 

 w J. Walter Fewkes. Fire Worship of the Hopi Indians, Ann. Rep., Smith. Inst., 1920, p. 608- 

 " Dumont D'Urville, Voyage, Paris, 1834, vol. 1, p. 94. 



