FIRE-MAKING APPARATUS. 577 



other details are correct, but they say they took two jneces of quartz, 

 rubbed them with sulphur, and struck them together. It is well kuowu 

 that pieces of quartz eveu when rubbed with sulphur will not strike 

 a spark of suflicieut heat to cause ignition. The pieces used must 

 have been pyritiferous quartz as noticed by Mr. L. M. Turner. 



To resume, the following facts arise out of the foregoing considera- 

 tions of the flint and pyrites method: 



(1) It is very ancient, inferring from the few reliable finds of pyrites 

 and flint in juxtaposition. 



(2) Its distribution is among high northern tribes, both Eskimo and 

 Indian. 



(3) As far as known, its range is limited to this area, only one other 

 instance coming to our notice, that of the Fuegians. 



2. FLINT AND STEEL. 



The flint and pyrites method is the ancestor of the flint and steel. 

 The latter method came in with the Iron Age. It is found in the early 

 settlements of that period. A steel for striking fire was found in the 

 pile dwellings of the Ueberlinger See.* The Archaeological Department 

 of the Museum has a specimen of a strike-a-light of the early age of 

 iron in Scandinavia. It is a flat, oval quartz stone with a groove 

 around the edge; it is thought to be for holding a strap by which it 

 could be held up and struck along the flat surface with the steel. It is 

 scored on these surfaces. The specimen in the Smithsonian is from 

 the national museum at Stockholm. In Egypt it is believed to have been 

 used for a long period, though there is no data at hand to support the 

 conclusion.t In China it has been in use for many centuries. Chinese 

 history, however, goes back to the use of sticks of wood. The briquet 

 must have been carried nearly everywhere by early commerce from the 

 ancient countries around the Mediterranean, as it was into new lands 

 by later commerce. 



Many persons remember the tinder-box that was taken from its 

 warm nook beside the fire-place whenever a light was wanted; the 

 matches tipped with sulphur used to start a blaze from the glowing tin- 

 der are also familiar to the older generation. The tinder-boxes in use 

 in this country were just like those in England from time immemorial 

 down to fifty years ago (fig. 48). Mr. Edward Lovett, of Croydon, 

 England, who has studied this matter thoroughly, calls attention to the 

 resemblance of the old English tinder-flints to the neolithic scrapers. 

 These scrapers, picked up at Brandon, can scarcely be discriminated 

 from those made at the present time at that place, and there is a sus- 

 picion that the present tinder-flint has come down directly from neo- 



* Keller, — Swiss Lake Dwellings. PI. xxviii, fig. 29. 



t Sir J. W. Dawson gives an interesting: account of the strike-a-light flinta used icL 

 Egypt in 1844, in Modern Science in Bible Lauds, p. 30, 



H. Mis. 142, pt. 2 37 



