Fire 



Fish 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



254 



paring the tinder from scraps of burnt linen 

 to light the brimstone-match with, has be- 

 come a curiosity worth securing when found 

 by chance in some farmhouse. TYLOR An- 

 thropology, ch. 11, p. 262. (A., 1899.) 



1239. FIRE, KINDLING OF, IN BRA- 

 ZILIAN FOREST Primitive Methods Still in 

 Use Simple Comfort of Life in Wilderness. 

 We landed and prepared for breakfast. 

 It was a pretty spot a clean, white, sandy 

 beach beneath the shade of wide-spreading 



trees. Joaquim made a fire. He first 

 scraped fine shavings from the midrib of a 

 bacaba-palm leaf; these he piled into a lit- 

 tle heap in a dry place, and then struck a 

 light in his bamboo tinder-box with a piece 

 of an old file and a flint, the tinder being 

 a felt-like, soft substance manufactured by 

 an ant (Polyrhachis bispinosus). By gentle 

 blowing the shavings ignited, dry sticks 

 were piled on them, and a good fire soon 

 resulted. He then singed and prepared the 

 cutfa, finishing by running a spit through 

 the body, and fixing one end in the ground 

 in a slanting position over the fire. We 

 had brought with us a bag of farinha and 

 a cup containing a lemon, a dozen or two 

 of fiery red peppers, and a few spoonfuls 

 of salt'. We breakfasted heartily when our 

 cutia was roasted, and washed the meal 

 down with a calabash-full of the pure water 

 of the river. BATES Naturalist on the 

 River Amazon, ch. 5, p. 663. (Hum., 1880.) 



1240. FIRE LIFTS PALL OF NIGHT 



Makes a Way through Darkness. Until 

 the savage could command fire, the clouded 

 evening sky left him as if sightless for toil, 

 for sport, for escape from ravening beasts 

 and sudden tempests. If his feet found a 

 beaten path, it was easy to stray from it 

 in darkness, perchance to pay the penalty 

 with his life. His lowly hearth, heaped 

 with crackling boughs, cheered even more 

 with its light than with its warmth. It 

 drew to its rays the industries of flint and 

 needle; its fitful beam created man's first 

 home. ILES Flame, Electricity, and the 

 Camera, ch. 3, p. 25. (D. & McC., 1900.) 



1241. FIRE, RIVERS OF Modern Street 

 Quarried through Lava Man's Inattention 

 to Warnings of Nature. Burning torrents 

 have often taken their course through the 

 streets of Torre del Greco, and consumed 

 or enclosed a large portion of the town in 

 solid rock. It seems probable that the de- 

 struction of three thousand of its inhabit- 

 ants in 1631, which some accounts attribute 

 to boiling water, was principally due to one 

 of those alluvial floods which we before 

 mentioned: but, in 1737, the lava itself 

 flowed through the eastern side of the town, 

 and afterwards reached the sea; and, in 

 1794, another current, rolling over the west- 

 ern side, filled the streets and houses, and 

 killed more than four hundred persons. The 

 main street is now quarried through this 

 lava, which supplied building-stones for new 



houses erected where others had been an- 

 nihilated. The church was half buried in 

 a rocky mass, but the upper portion served 

 as the foundation of a new edifice. 



The number of the population at present 

 is estimated at fifteen thousand; and a 

 satisfactory answer may readily be re- 

 turned to those who inquire how the in- 

 habitants can be so " inattentive to the 

 voice of time and the warnings of Nature," 

 as to rebuild their dwellings on a spot so 

 often devastated. No neighboring site un- 

 occupied by a town, or which would not 

 be equally insecure, combines the same ad- 

 vantages of proximity to the capital, to the 

 sea, and to the rich lands on the flanks of 

 Vesuvius. If the present population were 

 exiled, they would immediately be replaced 

 by another, for the same reason that the 

 Maremma of Tuscany and the Campagna 

 di Roma will never be depopulated, altho 

 the malaria fever commits more havoc in 

 a few years than the Vesuvian lavas in as 

 many centuries. The district around Naples 

 supplies one amongst innumerable examples, 

 that those regions where the surface is most 

 frequently renewed, and where the renova- 

 tion is accompanied, at different intervals 

 of time, by partial destruction of animal 

 and vegetable life, may nevertheless be 

 amongst the most habitable and delightful 

 on our globe. LYELL Principles of Geology, 

 bk. ii, ch. 24, p. 394. (A., 1854.) 



1242. FJRE, SACRED, KINDLING OF 



BY BRAHMANS Superstition Consecrates 

 Ancient Usage. [In India] tho people have 

 for ages kindled fire for practical use with 

 the flint and steel, yet the Brahmans, to 

 make the sacred fire 'for the daily sacrifice, 

 still use the barbaric art of violently bor- 

 ing a pointed stick into another piece of 

 wood till a spark comes. Asked why they 

 thus waste their labor when they know bet- 

 ter, they answer that they do it to get pure 

 and holy fire. But to us it is plain that 

 they are really keeping up by unchanging 

 custom a remnant of the ruder life once 

 led by their remote ancestors. TYLOR An- 

 thropology, ch. 1, p. 16. (A., 1899.) 



1243. FIRE STARTED WITH ICE 



A Paradox of Science. And now I will sub- 

 stitute for our glass lens one of a more 

 novel character. In a smooth iron mold 

 a lens of pellucid ice has been formed. 

 Placing it in the position occupied a mo- 

 ment ago by the glass lens, I can see the 

 beam brought to a sharp focus. At the 

 focus I place a bit of black paper, with a 

 little gun-cotton folded up within it. The 

 paper immediately ignites and the cotton 

 explodes. Strange, is it not, that the beam 

 should possess such heating power after 

 having passed through so cold a substance? 

 In his arctic expeditions Dr. Scoresby suc- 

 ceeded in exploding gunpowder by the sun's 

 rays converged by large lenses of ice; here 

 we" have succeeded in producing the effect 



