236 



FIRE^ COOKING^ AND VESSELS. 



The accounts, therij of the finding of fireless tribes are of 

 a highly doubtful character ; possibly true to some extent, but 

 not probably so. Of the existence of others who are possessed 

 of fire, but cannot produce it for themselves, there is more 

 considerable evidence. But, on the other hand, both the pos- 

 session of fii'e, and the art of making it, belong certainly to 

 the vast majority of mankind, and have done so as far back as 

 we can trace. The methods, however, which have been found 

 in use for making fire are very various. A survey of the con- 

 dition of the art in difi'erent parts of the world, as known to us 

 by du'ect evidence, is enough to make it probable that nearly 

 all the different processes found in use are the successors of 

 ruder ones; and, beside this, there is a mass of indirect evi- 

 dence which fills up some of the shortcomings of history, as it 

 does in the investigation of the Stone Age. Among some of 

 the highest races of mankind, the lower methods of fire-making 

 are still to be seen cropping out through the higher processes 

 by which, for so many ages, they have been overlaid. The 

 friction of two pieces of wood may perhaps be the original 

 means of fire-making used by man ; but, between the rudest 

 and the most artificial way in which this may be done, there is 

 a considerable range of progress. 



One of the simplest machines for producing fiii'e is that which 

 may be called the " stick-and-groove." A blunt-pointed stick 



is run along a groove of its own 

 making in a piece of wood lying 

 on the ground, somewhat as 

 shown in the imaginary drawing. 

 Fig. 20. Mr. Darwin says that 

 the very light wood of the Hibis- 

 cus tiUaceus was alone used for the 

 purpose in Tahiti. A native would 

 produce fire with it in a few 

 seconds ; he himself found it very 

 hard work, but at length succeed- 

 ed. This stick-and-groove process 

 has been repeatedly described in the South Sea Islands, namely, 

 in Tahiti, New Zealand, the Sandwich, Tonga, Samoa, and 



Fig. 20. 



