en during this long period, and yet nothing ousted our
old friend the tinder-box. The tinder-box seems, as it were, to speak to
us with a feeling of pride and say, "Yes, all you have been talking
about were the clever ideas of clever men, but I lived through them all;
my flint and my steel were easily procured, my ingredients were not
dangerous, and I was fairly certain in my action."

In the year 1833 the reign of the tinder-box came to an end. It had had
a very long innings--many, many hundred years; but in 1833 its reign was
finished. It was in this year the discovery was announced, that bone
could be made to yield large quantities of phosphorus at a cheap rate.
Originally the price of phosphorus was sufficient to prevent its
every-day use. Hanckwitz thus advertises it--"For the information of the
curious, he is the only one in London who makes inflammable phosphorus
that can be preserved in water. All varieties unadulterated. Sells
wholesale and retail. Wholesale, 50s. per oz.; retail, L3 sterling per
oz. Every description of good drugs. My portrait will be distributed
amongst my customers as a keepsake."

[Illustration: Fig. 10.]

Let me give you a brief account of the method of preparing lucifer
matches, and to illustrate this part of my story, I am indebted to
Messrs. Bryant and May for specimens. Pieces of wood are cut into
blocks of the size you see here (Fig. 10 A). These blocks are then cut
into little pieces, or splints, of about one-eighth of an inch square
(Fig. 10 b). By the bye, abroad they usually make their match splints
round by forcing them through a circular plate, pierced with small round
holes. I do not know why we in England make our matches square, except
for the reason that Englishmen are fond of doing things on the square.
The next part of the process is to coat the splints with paraffin or
melted sulphur. The necessity for this coating of sulphur or paraffin
you will understand by an experiment. If I take some pieces of
phosphorus and place them upon a sheet of cartridge paper, and then set
fire to the pieces of phosphorus, curiously enough, the ignited
phosphorus will not set fire to the paper. I have taken five little
pieces of phosphorus (as you see), so as to give the paper every chance
of catching fire (Fig. 11). Now that is exactly what would happen if
paraffin (or some similarly combustible body) was not placed on the end
of the splint; my phosphorus would burn when I rubbed it on