ching it on" or "switching it off," as we commonly express the act
of connecting or disconnecting the lamp with the source of electricity.

[Illustration: Fig. 14.]

[Illustration: Fig. 15.]

Here is another apparatus to which I desire to call your attention. If I
take a battery such as I have here--a small galvanic battery of some ten
cells--you will see a very little spark when I make and break contact of
the two poles. This is what is called an electrical torch, in which I
utilize this small spark as a gas-lighter (Fig. 16). This instrument
contains at its lower part a source of electricity, and if I connect the
two wires that run through this long tube with the apparatus which
generates the current, which I do by pressing on this button, you see a
little spark is at once produced which readily sets fire to my gas-lamp.
We have in this electrical torch a substitute--partial substitute, I
ought to say--for the lucifer match. I think you will admit that it was
with some show of reason I suggested that after all it is possible the
lucifer match may not have quite so long an innings as the tinder-box.
But there is another curious thing to note in these days of great
scientific progress, viz. that there are signs of the old tinder-box
coming to the front again. Men, I have often noticed, find it a very
difficult thing to light their pipes with a match on the top of an
omnibus on a windy day, and inventors are always trying to find out
something that will enable them to do so without the trouble and
difficulty of striking a match, and keeping the flame a-going long
enough to light their cigars. And so we have various forms of
pipe-lighting apparatus, of which here is one--which is nothing more
than a tinder-box with its flint and steel (Fig. 17). You set to work
somewhat in this way: placing the tinder (_a_) on the flint (_b_), you
strike the flint with the steel (_c_), and--there, I have done it!--my
tinder is fired by the spark. So you see there are signs, not only of
the lucifer match being ousted by the applications of electricity, but
of the old tinder-box coming amongst us once again in a new form.

[Illustration: Fig. 16.]

[Illustration: Fig. 17.]

I am now going to ask you to travel with me step by step through the
operation of getting fire out of the tinder-box. The first thing I have
to do is to prepare my tinder, and I told you, if you remember, that the
way we made tinder was by charring pieces o