584 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
tinder-holder of bamboo. Another Igorrote example (fig. 45), col- 
lected by Dr. Alexander Schadenberg, is in the Vienna Museum. The 
cylinder is of carabao horn and the piston of wood; the tinder of cot- 
ton is contained in a bamboo holder. The collector refers to the use 
of the instrument among the Igorrotes of Tiagan, Lepanto, and Bon- 
toc. F. H. Sawyer” gives the Igorrote name of the fire piston as 
pamiguin. Sulpakan is mentioned as the native name of a specimen 
from Luzon in the Berlin Museum. <A Tinguian specimen is in the 
latter museum. In the Ethnological Museum at Rome there is a fire 
piston from the Calinga tribe in the province of Nueva Vizcaya, col- ° 
lected by José Ma. de Mourin, 1893 (fig. 46). The horn cylinder is 
longitudinally faceted and transversely ringed at either end. The 
piston is of wood. D.C. Worcester mentions ° examples made of buf- 
falo horn from the wild tribes of North Luzon. He adds: “* To per- 
form this operation successfully requires long practice. I have yet 
to see a white man who professes to be able to doit. * * * How 
the savages first came to think of getting fire in such a way is, to me, 
a mystery.” I may assure him that the process of procuring fire by 
this means is quite easy, provided that the bore of the cylinder is true 
and the piston carefully packed. In Mr. Edward Bidwell’s collec- 
tion there is an example (fig. 47) from Luzon with horn cylinder and 
wooden piston, made very plainly. Mr. Landor @ says that in the more 
elaborate fire pistons from Luzon “a receptacle for the tinder balls 
is to be found and a metal spoon attached.” 
Lastly, there is a reference to the fire piston in Mindanao, the 
southern island of the Philippine group. F. H. Sawyer mentions ° 
it as being used by the Mouteses or Buquidnones in that island. 
ORIGIN AND DISPERSAL. 
Having given as far as my present information admits a descrip- 
tion of the geographical distribution and varieties of the fire piston, 
let me now turn to the more difficult though perhaps more interest- 
ing side of my subject. The question arises, What do we learn as 
to the history of this instrument from its distribution ? 
The two regions in which it occurs are very widely separated, both 
geographically and culturally. On the one hand, we have western 
Europe and England as a home of the fire piston in an environment 
of the highest culture; on the other hand, we find it occurring over 
“@Publicationen aus dem Kgl. Ethnog. Museum zu Dresden, by A. B. Meyer 
and A. Schadenberg, VIII, Die Philippinen. 1. Nord Luzon, 1890, p. 21, and pl. 
Xvil, figs. 18 and 19. 
+The Inhabitants of the Philippines, 1900, p. 266. 
¢ The Philippine Islands, 1898, p. 297. 
d4 Op. cit. 
€ Op. cit., p. 345. 
