Chats on Household Curios

by Fred. W. Burgess

FIG. 6.—ANCIENT ROMAN FIRE-DOG.
(In the National Museum at Naples.)

FIG. 7.—SUSSEX GRATE BACK, DATED 1588.

Fire-making Appliances.

It seems natural to inquire into the origin of the need of a fireplace, and to do so we must go back to prehistoric times and trace the discovery of fire-making apparatus, for without the means of lighting a fire it is obvious that the grate would be useless. With the fire came artificial light, the two great discoveries being perfected side by side, sometimes the one gaining ground, at others the one that had fallen behind shooting ahead as the result of some great discovery, or the application of scientific principles not deemed of utility to the one or the other as the case might be. The fire-making appliances which were in use for the purpose of lighting fires were of course used long before any scheme of artificial lighting—apart from the flames and radiance from the fire. Professor Flinders Petrie, that great investigator into the antiquities of the Ancients, tells us that fire-making by friction has been found to exist in far-off times. It would appear that the discovery of how to produce fire has been accomplished independently by men living under very different conditions and at all ages. The fire-making of the Ancients has been rediscovered by primitive people in more recent days, although it is probable that native races who until recently have been living apart from the great world outside have moved slowly in their march of civilization, and have been using the same methods as those first tried by their ancestors ages ago. In the unrivalled collection of appliances got together by Professor Petrie, there are fire drills from the Transvaal, bow drills used by the Esquimaux, and fire ploughs from North Queensland. Lighting fires must have been a slow and difficult task in the days when tinder boxes were in request, for when Curfew rang and the couvre de feu had done its work there was no fire in which to thrust the torch, and the entire process had to be gone over again when the fire had once more to be kindled.

Tinder Boxes.

The tinder box, formerly a real necessary, was to be found in every house, and in many instances, in the days before lucifer matches, it was a desirable pocket companion. Tinder boxes were made of different materials; some were of wood, others of iron or brass. They lent themselves to ornamentation: thus some were engraved and quite artistic; many of the more recent ones were made of tin, and on the covers were decorative little scenes. The contents of the tinder boxes were of course flint and steel and tinder (something very inflammable, such as scorched linen), with a damper for extinguishing the smouldering fire after a light had been obtained, or in later days by the sulphur-tipped match applied to it. Among the varieties are what are termed pistol tinder boxes, instruments which contained a small charge of gunpowder, which, when fired, lighted the tinder. Tinder pouches or purses containing flint and tinder having a piece of steel riveted on to the edge of the purse or pouch were a common form. Those brought over from Central Asia were frequently decorated with dragons and the swastika symbol, in damascened work.

Many inventions were put forward by chemists before the perfecting of the common match, the wax vesta, and the fusee. One of these was Berry's apparatus, which he devised in the beginning of the nineteenth century, calling it a "contrivance for lighting lamps in the dark." It consisted of an acid bottle with a string by which a conical stopper could be raised, and a chlorate match held against the stopper became ignited.