FIRE, AND FIRE-MAKING: A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILISATION.

BY JOHN NEWTON, M.R.C.S.

"FUSEES, only a ha'penny a box!" "Vesuvians, three boxes for a penny!" I am afraid that I have chosen a very vulgar subject, of which we all hear too much. The means of fire-making in this year of our Lord, 1867, are only too facile and abundant. Ladies tread upon lucifers, and set their dresses on fire. The smoker's match carelessly thrown away has become a social nuisance, the great source of conflagrations now-a-days. One Insurance Company has lately reported that its losses from fires caused by lucifer matches alone amount to not less than £10,000 annually! In this complex civilisation of ours, we are surrounded from our birth-rich and poor alike-with social aids, refinements, and luxuries innumerable. Every one of these things has a history, and had a beginning. And I know no better way of realising to oneself the enormous progress which has been made by the most advanced races of mankind than to take some one of our great social needs and write its story.

About eighteen hundred years ago, Plutarch wrote an essay on the theme, Which was the more useful to man, water or fire?" Aqua aut Ignis utilior?" The question would be infinitely more difficult to answer now. Yet there was a time, strange to say, when the use of fire, even in the humblest way, as ministering to social comfort and human protection, was unknown. Men saw the lightning fill the heavens with its brightness, and fire the pines of the forest, yet were ignorant of any method by which they could make it subservient to