THE FIRE PISTON—BALFOUR. 575 
piston is forced up the bore, from which it rebounds slightly back with the 
elasticity of the compressed air, and on being plucked out, which it must be in- 
stantly, the tinder is found to be lighted. * * * I can only attribute the 
light produced to the sudden and powerful compression of the air in the bore of 
the cylinder. 
This description of the method of using the fire piston applies 
practically to all oriental examples. The record is interesting as 
being an early reference to the use of the instrument in the peninsula, 
and also in the eastern Malayan Archipelago. 
Turning now to more recent records of the occurrence of fire pistons 
in the peninsula, I may give the following first-hand information, 
which I owe largely to Mr. W. W. Skeat and to Mr. Nelson Annan- 
dale, who have done so much for the ethnology of this region: 
Mr. Annandale, in 1901, saw the instrument in regular use at and 
in the neighborhood of Ban Sai Kau, a village in the state of Nawn- 
chik (called Toyan by the Malays), the most northerly of the Siamese 
Malay states, west of the Patani River. The Siamese name of the 
fire piston is lek: phai tok, the Malayan name is gobi api. It is there 
chiefly used for lighting cigarettes in the jungle, as the spark is not 
easily extinguished by high winds. One specimen from this village, 
given me by Mr. Annandale (fig. 26), 1s of very small size, the cylin- 
der being only 5.7 cm. in length and the bore 4.5 cm. It is entirely of 
black horn; the cylinder is ornamentally, though roughly, turned, 
barrel-shaped in the center, and tapered to a blunt point at the lower 
extremity. The piston has a plain, rounded knob at the top, and the 
usual hollow for tinder at the other end. A specimen obtained there 
by Mr. Robinson for 5 cents is very similar in shape and size, though 
somewhat better made. A third specimen from the same locality 
(fig. 27), collected by Mr. Annandale for the Pitt-Rivers Museum, 
has a very elegantly lathe-turned and slightly engraved cylinder of 
horn; the piston is of light wood with a turned knob of horn through 
which it is fixed with an adhesive. 
From farther south, in the state of Patani, Mr. Skeat procured 
three examples very similar in shape to those of Nawnchik; these are 
in the Cambridge Museum. One of them is very small (fig. 28), 
with horn cylinder and wooden piston; the depth of the bore is only 
3 cm. A second has a lathe-turned horn cylinder and a piston of 
hard wood with ivory head, depth of bore 3.7 cm. The third (fig. 
29) is larger somewhat, with lathe-turned cylinder of bone and 
wooden piston; depth of bore 5.5 cm. All three were obtained in 
Jalor (Jala), one of the seven districts of Patani, some 30 miles up 
the Patani River. The Malay name given by Mr. Skeat is gobek api 
(lit. “ fire piston”). The word gobek is that usually applied to the 
piston (pestle and mortar) used by old and toothless men for crush- 
ing up the betel leaf; apc in Malayan means “ fire.” The tinder, 
