THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



that long period. One of the most vivid recollections of 

 my childhood is of seeing the cook make tinder in the 

 evening, by burning old linen rags, and in the morning, 

 with flint and steel, obtaining the spark which, by careful 

 blowing, spread sufficiently to ignite the thin brimstone 

 match from which a candle was lit and fire secured for 

 the day. The process was, however, sometimes, a 

 tedious one, and if the tinder had accidentally got damp, 

 or if the flint were worn out, after repeated failures a 

 light had to be obtained from a neighbor. At that time 

 there were few savages in any part of the world but 

 could obtain fire as easily as the most civilized of 

 mankind. 



At length, after the use of these rude methods for 

 many thousand years, a great discovery was made which 

 revolutionized the process of fire-getting. The proper- 

 ties of phosphorus were known to the alchemists, and it 

 is strange that its ready ignition by friction was not made 

 use of to obtain fire at a much earlier period. It was, 

 however, both an expensive and a dangerous material, 

 and though about a hundred years ago it began to be 

 made cheaply from bones, it was not used in the earliest 

 friction matches. These were invented in 1827, or a 

 little earlier, by Mr. John Walker, a chemist and drug- 

 gist of Stockton-on-Tees, and consisted of wood splints, 

 dipped in chlorate of potash and sulphur mixed with 

 gum, which ignited when rubbed on sandpaper. Two 

 years later the late Sir Isaac Holden invented a similar 

 match. About 1834, phosphorus began to be used with 

 the other materials to cause more easy ignition, and by 

 1840 these matches became so cheap as to come into gen- 

 eral use in place of the old flint and steel. They have 



