2S 



Fig. 20. 



powdered material is usually strewn upon the hole in the basal 

 piece of wood. Seeing that this method of producing fire 

 depends upon friction, I was surprised to notice a curious 

 practice amongst the Larrehiyas. When, with the twirling 

 stick, the operator had bored out the depression in the hori- 

 zontal piece, he squeezed the tip and sides of his nose with 

 the finger and thumb, by which means a quantity of greasy 

 matter was expressed from the sebaceous glands. This he 

 scraped together under the nails of his index and middle fin- 

 gers, and placed the mass upon the ankle of his left leg. 

 Then, after resuming the rotating movements, so soon as the 

 end began to smoke, he touched this against the greasy lump 

 on the ankle, and continued the twirling. 



The ''sawing process,"* in which the edge of a flat piece of 

 wood is worked by hand backwards and forwards along a 

 groove, transversely to the length of a split piece, in the cleft 

 of which easily ignited material is packed, is also in practice. 

 See pi. X., fig. 1. A peg passing through the cleft pins the 

 basal part to the ground at one end, while the other is held 



* See W. E. Roth: Ethnological Studies, p. 105. pi. xii., 

 fig. 245. FT. Bosedow: Trans. Rov. Soc, S.A., vol. xxviii., 

 1904, p. 27. 



