Chap. I. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 



39 



of Fire ; and, accordingly, the chief ufe they make of it, is to draw 

 the birds to it in the night-time, that they may have an opportunity 

 of killing them. The confeqiience of thefe people not having the 

 ufe of Fire is, that they can have none of the Arts of Vulcan and 

 Minerva, and therefore mud want thofe Arts which we reckon 

 neceffary to life. 



Before I leave this fubjed, I muft obferve, that it is perhaps the 

 mod extraordinary thing in the hiflory of our Species, that an Ele- 

 ment, which is the abhorrence and terror of every Animal in the 

 natural (late *, and of Man among the reft, Ihould have become not 

 only familiar to us, but even a neceffary of life, without which ma- 

 ny people believe that it is impoffible to live. See what I have fur- 

 ther faid upon this fubjed in the Origin and Progrefs of Lan- 

 guage f. I will only further add, that the ufe we make of Fire muft 

 have a very great efFed: upon us, one way or another j for, either 

 it muft make us larger, ftronger, and healthier, or it muft have a 

 contrary effed. As to fize, the inhabitants of the Ladrone Wands 

 are reported by fome travellers to be of a gigantic fize ; but Captain 

 Cowley, in his voyage to the South Sea in 1684, ^^js that the 

 ftature of the talleft of them did not exceed 7^ feet but that 

 they were broad and lufty in proportion to their height, and exceed- 

 ingly ftrong J. And there is another traveller who fays that they 

 live a hundred years, without difeafe §. 



The 



* Homer fays, that a Lion, who is not to be kept ofTotherwife, runs away from a 

 torch. And travellers in defert countries make Fires in the night, to (ccure them- 

 felves againft wild hearts. In this way Mr Byron fays that he kept off a very great 

 bead that came to attack him and his company in the night. Narrative, pa^e "6. 



t Vol. i. Bock ii. chap. 7. Second Edition. 



X See that Voyage in the Colledion publifhed by Mr Callender, under the name 

 of Terra Aujlralis incognita. Vol. ii. p. 552. 



§ See the work above quoted, The Hiflory of the Works of the Learned, Vol. it. 

 p. 270 May 170c.— See alfo Father Gaubien's Account of the Marianne IHands, 

 quoted in Btiffon's Natural Hiftory, Vol. iii. p. /\q6. 



