1916.] The Invention of Fire. 3 



power to preserve the tire from day to day and from year to 

 year, and to convey it from camp to camp. Then ensued one 

 of the greatest discoveries of all, the potentiality of originating 

 a fire where no fire existed. It was almost an act of creation. 

 No more was a long journey up the nearest volcano, or a long 

 wait for the next forest fire, necessary to renew the happiness 

 of the community when the fire-tender had been negligent and 

 had been soundly thrashed on that account by a cold, hungry, 

 and very angry community. 



How many thousands of years elapsed before that pitch 

 of perfection was attained no one can tell, but we do know 

 that matches, now two annas a dozen boxes, were only in- 

 vented less than ninety years ago. Of course it is all very 

 speculative, these various steps in the conversion of fire, one 

 of the great forces of nature, into the service of man, which is 

 the essence of one division of the work of the civil engineer. 

 In one century the engineer has given us railways, telegraphs 

 and flying machines. The primitive engineer was not so 

 expeditious. He had not the skill and experience of ages 

 to help him in applying a discovery. So, as he did it so very 

 very slowly perhaps a few moments may now be spared for 

 imaginings of his progress. 



Lamb, in one of his happy essays, described the discovery 

 of roast-pig in China after a fire had swept away the owner's 

 house. More primitive man found his roast in a burnt-out 

 forest, but even then one must conceive much trepidation and 

 hunger before he became educated enough for the taste and 

 smell to appeal to him. Or perhaps the comfortable sensation 

 near a red-hot lava flow on a cold, wet and windy night first 

 created a desire for warmth, when the sun, that only shines by 

 day, had gone. Or did an infuriated man brandish a burning 

 branch against a sabre-toothed tiger, and find it more effective 

 than a throwing-stone ? Anyway, fire always existed, and he 

 somehow managed to appreciate it and then to utilise it. 



Some of the difficulties of keeping fire alight have already 

 been discussed. The selection of proper materials and their 

 addition at the right time are not learned in a hurry as any 

 picnic party, unaccustomed to country life, knows only too 

 well. Then the foresight to lay in a stock of combustible 



material and to protect it from rain, is not the result of a day. 

 Much bitter experience also probably had to be endured from 

 uncontrolled conflagrations before our ape-like progenitor could 

 keep his fire in proper bounds. The application of fire to cook- 

 ing is part of a larger subject with which this note does not in- 

 tend to deal. 



The carriage of fire was the next great step to be learnt. A 

 burning brand in itself is not a very portable object and is not 

 easily concealed in case of emergency. Some material is re- 

 quired with the property of long smouldering and ready re-igni- 





