FIRE-MAKING, the art of producing fire. It was believed by the ancients that man was without fire till Prometheus stole some from the chariot of the sun, but the whole story has a mythical look. Plutarch says that in his time there were fireless races of mankind, and the geographer Pomponius Mela indicates Ethiopia as the locality of one of these. A certain Eu doxus, however, taught them how to produce it. This story cannot be tested now, but Edward Tylor, after passing in review the alleged mod ern instances of fireless races, rejects them one and all. He believes that there was a time when man was without fire, but it now every where appears to have passed away. The old est method known of making fire is the South Sea Island one by means of a stick and a groove. There followed next, it is believed, the method of striking fire by means of a flint, a piece of iron pyrites and tinder. This process was known to the ancients, which is the reason why they called one of the two minerals used pyrites — that is, fire-stone. The Greeks, in the
time of Aristophanes, knew how to concentrate the sun's rays by a burning-glass, and the Ro mans in the age of Pliny (23-79 A.D.) effected the same result by concave mirrors. In the case of the need-fire, a superstitious rite con nected with sun worship, and of which an in stance occurred near Perth as late as 1826, fire was obtained by the revolution of a wind lass in the hole of an oaken post smeared with tar. The preceding generation remembered the time when fire was obtained by flint, steel, and a tinder box, till superseded by the lucifer match. Consult Hough, 'Smithsonian Report' (part II, pp. 531-587, Washington 1888); id., pp. 395-409 (ib. 1890) ; Tylor, 'Researches into the Early History of Mankind' (New York 1905).