
THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 105 
the Bukidnon of Mindanao. A plunger works snugly 
in a wood, bamboo, horn, or metal tube. <A little tinder 
is laid inside. A smart blow on the knob heading the 
plunger compresses the air to the point of producing 
heat enough to ignite the cotton; but considerable 
dexterity is required for success. The origin of this 
device remains obscure. It seems hardly capable of 
designed invention by any but a civilized people con- 
versant with physical laws; and no analogous imple- 
ment is certainly known which could have led to the 
discovery by accident. The cannon is perhaps the most 
likely prototype whose suggestion led to the uncalcu- 
lated invention; but the blowgun, the smith’s bellows, 
and the betel mortar also present similarities. The fire 
piston occurs also in Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Molucca 
—in fact wherever the true Malay has established him- 
self; and in Burma, Siam, and Anam. Its employment 
in the Philippines: precisely by the uncultivated tribes 
in the interior, the ‘‘Indonesians”’ or Proto-Malays, is 
therefore puzzling, and another of the many indications 
of the intricacy of Filipino civilization. The fire piston 
has also been known in Europe, but only as a sort of 
mechanical toy, and seems not to have been discovered 
there until the nineteenth century, so that its diffusion 
from this source over the whole of Indo-China and the 
East Indies within a generation or two, not to mention 
its firm establishment among the remote mountain 
Filipinos, seems incredible. The complete fascinating 
story of this extraordinary implement may never be 
recovered. 
Flint and steel were perhaps the commonest fire 
implement in the Philippines, at least until the introduc- 
tion of phosphorus matches, as might be expected 
from an iron-working people. If no other steel was 
available, the back of the bolo or head ax was used. 

