d the match from the wind, by throwing a
cloak or saddle-cloth, or something else over the head, whilst you
operate; and secondly, to have abundance of twigs of the smaller sizes,
that there may be no uncertainty of the lucifer-match being able to light
them, and set the fire a-going. In a steady downfall of rain, you may
light a match for a pipe under your horse's belly. If you have paper to
spare, it is a good plan to twist it into a hollow cone; to turn the cone
with its apex to the wind; and immediately after rubbing the match, to
hold it inside the cone. The paper will become quickly heated by the
struggling flame and will burst into a miniature conflagration, too
strong to be puffed out by a single blast of air. Wax lucifers are
undoubtedly better than wooden ones, for in damp weather, wooden ones
will hardly burn; but wax is waterproof, and independent of wet or dry.
When there is nothing dry, at hand, to rub the lucifer-match against,
scratch the composition on its head with the edge of a knife or with the
finger-nail. It is a sure way of lighting it; and with care, there is no
need of burning the fingers.

Fire-sticks.--In every country without exception, where inquiry has been
made, the method of obtaining fire by rubbing one stick against another,
has been employed. In savage countries the method still remains in
present use; in nearly all the more civilised ones, it has been
superseded within historic periods by flints and steels and the like, and
within this present generation by lucifer-matches. The only instance I
know in which flints are said to have preceded fire-sticks, is in the
quotation below from Pliny. A light has also been obtained in
pre-historic times, as I have already mentioned, by reflecting the sun
from a hollow surface; but this method required costly apparatus, and
could never have been in common use. Hence, although so far as I am
aware, the Bible, and Homer, and other records of great antiquity, are
absolutely silent on the contemporary methods of procuring fire; and
although Pliny says the reverse--I think we are justified in believing
that the plan of rubbing sticks together was absolutely universal in the
barbaric infancy of the human race. In later Greek History, Prometheus is
accredited with the invention of fire-sticks. Among the Romans both
Seneca and Pliny write about them. Pliny says (Nat. Hist. xvi. 76, 77),
"There is heat in the mulberry, in the bay-laurel, in ivy, and in all