THE FIRE PISTON—BALFOUR. 513 
One with cylinder of horn, 8.6 cm. long, tapering upward, cut in 
nine longitudinal facets, and with ring of carving round the base; 
plunger of hard wood with the head capped with silk wrapping; 
native name, mt-put,; given by Capt. R. C. Temple to the Pitt-Rivers 
Museum, Oxford, 1890 (fig. 19). 
One small though elaborate specimen of black horn throughout, 
apparently lathe-turned, the cylinder ornamentally shaped, and rein- 
forced at the end with metal bands, as is also the rounded head of the 
“plunger; ” from the cylinder hang three strings, one carrying a 
smail velvet bag of vegetable-floss tinder, another a small nutshell 
containing grease for lubricating the packing of the piston, the third 
a small ivory spatula for spreading the grease (fig. 20 on pl. m1) ; 
given by Maj. R. C. Temple to the Pitt-Rivers Museum, 1894. 
From Mandalay, and probably of Kachin origin, I have in my 
possession a specimen very similar to the last, of black horn through- 
out, lathe-turned, the head of the piston riveted to the end of the 
shaft; with bag of vegetable-floss tinder, and small, spherical wooden 
grease box (fig. 21); given to me by the collector, Mr. H. O. Mor- 
daunt, in 1899. ) 
A sketch (fig. 22) of an elaborately carved fire piston seen in 
Mogok, 1893, was made for me by Mr. Donald Gunn. The decorative 
treatment of this specimen is unusually elaborate. The native name 
is given as mizoon. 
Two examples, locally called m-put, collected in the southern 
Shan states, were given me by Mr. H. E. Leveson in 1890 and 1891. 
Of these, one (fig. 23) is quite plain, with long cylinder of hard 
wood, and piston of buffalo horn with large rounded knob. It was 
obtained from a pungi, or priest in a monastery (Xyaung). The 
other (fig. 24) is entirely of buffalo horn, the cylinder gracefully 
fluted in eight facets; the plunger is elegantly tapered, and has a 
rounded head inlaid with small metal studs. The depth of the bore 
in the cylinder is only 4.5 em., the cylinder itself being 8.3 cm. long. 
This gives a very limited play to the piston, rendering the operation 
of fire producing a somewhat difficult one. Belonging to this speci- 
men are a tinder pouch of palm spathe and a turned-wood box for 
grease (fig. 24 a). 
Farther still toward the south a specimen was seen by Prof. A. 
Bastian, in a monastery in Shwegyin, which lies near the mouth of 
the Poung-loung River in Pegu. The tube was of ivory.“ A similar 
specimen was made for him by a native. 
It would appear that the westerly limit of distribution of fire 
pistons in Burma is bounded by the Irrawaddy River, while they 
extend in a north and south direction from the neighborhood of 
4 Bastian, Die Voelker des Oestlichen Asien, 1866, IT, p. 418, 
