perhaps referred to in Father Le Jeune's statement that the Algonquin Indians strike fire with two minerals (pierres de mine).[1] The use of iron pyrites for striking fire was known to the Greeks and Romans, and it shared with flint the name of fire-stone, πυρίτης, pyrites, which it and some other metallic sulphurets have since taken entire possession of.
The Alashkans are reported to obtain fire by striking together two pieces of quartz rubbed with sulphur over some dry grass or moss, strewed with feathers where the sulphur falls; and similar descriptions of the process are given in the adjacent islands.[2] Father Zucchelli, who was a missionary in West Africa about the beginning of last century, gives the following account of the way in which, he says, the negroes made fire on their journeys:—"When they found a fire-stone (Feuerstein) on the road, they lay down by it on their knees, took a little piece of wood in their hands, and threw sand between the stone and the wood, rubbing them so long against one another till the wood began to burn, and herewith they all lighted their pipes, and so went speedily forth again smoking on their journey."[3] It is possible that not flint (as is usual), but pyrites, may here be meant by feuerstein.
The flint and steel may have come into use at any time after the beginning of the Iron age, but history fails to tell us the date of its introduction in Greece and Rome, China, and most other districts of the Old World. In modern times it has made its way with iron into many new places, though it has not always been able to supersede the fire-sticks at once; sometimes, it seems, from a difficulty in getting flints. For instance it was necessary in Sumatra to import the flints from abroad, and thus they did not come immediately into general use among the natives; and there may perhaps be a similar reason for the fire-drill having held its ground to this day among some of the iron-using races of Southern Africa.
The Greeks were familiar with the use of the burning-lens in
