538 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
evidence of its frequent use among the widely separated “ Indo- 
nesian ” or Proto-Malay tribes of Luzon and the Mois of Indo-China, 
who are by some ethnologists classed as belonging to the “ Indo- 
nesian ” stock, together with the fact that the neighboring more 
highly cultured peoples are without it, may be taken as pointing to a 
Proto-Malayan origin, which would assign the invention of the fire 
piston to a race still lower in culture than the Malays proper. This 
theory would involve a very considerable antiquity for the Eastern 
fire piston and the probabilities are perhaps hardly in favor of it. 
All that can be said with any certainty is that, whether the fire piston 
was introduced to the Malays by Europeans or by some other Eastern 
people in a condition of culture more or less on a par with their own, 
we must, I think, give to the Malays due credit for having materially 
assisted in extending the geographical range of the instrument and 
of having introduced it into several of the islands of the Eastern 
Archipelago where it bas taken root, and where local varieties have 
in the course of time arisen and themselves again become modified 
in matters of detail. 
With the single exception of the peculiar type from British North 
Borneo (fig. 37), all the eastern forms are essentially the same in 
general structure, the less important details being those which alone 
are capable of modification and variation. These details include the 
materials used in the manufacture of the cylinder and piston, which 
may be of bamboo, wood, horn, ivory, bone, brass, or lead (lead and 
tin usually) ; the external form; such accessories as the tinder recep- 
tacle, which may be separate from the instrument, and consist of bam- 
boo, nutshells, beans, palm spathe, or of woven materials. Prickers 
for adjusting the tinder, grease boxes and spatule for applying the 
grease to the piston packing, are other accessories which may be 
present or absent, but whose occurrence in identical shape in widely 
separated regions adds to the evidence which goes to prove that the 
whole series of eastern types belongs to one morphological group. 
Assuming, for purposes of argument, that the oriental fire pis- 
ton was invented independently by the relatively primitive peoples 
among whom it appears to have been in use during a long period, 
we may consider the question as to the manner in which these peo- 
ple might conceivably have hit upon this highly specialized method 
of producing fire. It must be admitted that the great difficulty in 
arriving at a satisfactory conclusion upon this point is the principal 
factor which militates against the acceptance of the theory of the 
native origin of the fire piston. There can be little doubt that, if 
the invention was made by an eastern people, the principle must 
have been arrived at by some happy accident, the effect having been 
produced during the process of some action or work unconnected 
with fire making, It is inconceivable that such a physical phenome- 
