110 BULLETIN 139; UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



This is the principle involved in the operation of the aerophort% 

 pyrophorus, fire syringe, or fire piston, as it has been variously called. 

 The device for lighting tinder is a tube closed at one end with a 

 smooth and accurate bore fitted with a plunger packed at the end to 

 insure complete compression. At the end of the plunger was a small 

 cavity for holding the tinder. This instrument was a scientific curi- 

 osity sometimes used by lecturers to demonstrate the heat effects of 

 air compression. It was sometimes, though rarely, used by individ- 

 uals as a pereonal strike-a-light . The instrument as made by white 

 men was manifestly unsatisfactory and uncertain in its performance. 

 This is because the white man did not know the details of its proper 

 construction. The same phenomena occur when a tyro endeavors 

 to make and work a fire drill. There are, therefore, good groimds 

 for suspecting that the European modes of the tire syringe were 

 amateurish approximations of the effective implements of native use 

 and manufacture in the East, a knowledge of which had filtered back 

 through the agency of travelers. In any case, if the fire syringe was 

 discovered or rediscovered in the course of experimental or practical 

 work in mechanics, it had not arrived at the perfection of the Malay 

 apparatus. There are no valid reasons why the fire syringe is not a 

 native invention. Its technology among the various tribes practic- 

 ing its use give it a native phase. It is of a higher grade of inven- 

 tion than the fire drill, but not more diSicult of conception and ex- 

 ecution. The entire stock of the genius of man is not centered in the 

 advanced nations. Theories of the origin of the fire syringe have been 

 vitiated by the idea that it is an apparatus of scientific rather than 

 native technology. 



Henry Balfour, who has monographed the fire syringe, states that 

 it "extends sporadically over a wide range from northern Burma and 

 Siam through the Malay Peninsula and the Malaj^an Archipelago to 

 its eastern Umits in the islands of Luzon and Mindanao in the Phil- 

 ippines." ^* Mr. Balfour shows that the instruments occur in Burma, 

 French ludo-China, Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Sarawak, Borneo, 

 British North Borneo, Java, Flores, and the Philippine Islands. 



Of the eight fire syringes in the United States National Museum 

 from widely separated localities, four have a bore of one-fourth 

 of an inch, one of five-sixteenths and two of three-eighths inch. One 

 may conclude on the showing that one-fourth inch is the eflfective 

 bore. The depth varies from 1^ inches (two specimens) to 4jy'2 

 inches. On this showing the depth is not important. Horn and 

 hardwoods are the materials of the specimens above mentioned (pi. 

 31, figs. 1-5). 



M The Fire Piston. Anthrop. Essays Presented to Edward Burnett Tylor in Honour of His 75th Biith- 

 day, Oct. 2, 1907. 



