Ac primum silici scintillam excudit Achates
Suscepitque ignum foliis atque arida circum
Nutrimenta dedit, rapuitque in fomite flammam.
(Æneid B. 1, 174-176.)
One of the oldest methods of fire-making that we know of is, that by the
percussion of flint and pyrites. It is believed to have been the
original discovery. If there is any difference in the difficulties of
conception and execution in either of the inventions, it lies in favor
of the sticks of wood.
The distribution of the flint and pyrites method, both in time and
place, is very interesting. Mr. Evans, in his epoch-making work,
“Ancient Stone Implements,” page 14, remarks that the name of pyrites
(πυρ, fire) is itself sufficient evidence of the purpose to which the
mineral was applied in ancient times. Whatever the fact is in Roman
history, the Eskimo calls pyrites firestone, some Indian tribes call
flint firestone, the German name for flint is _feuerstein_, and it is a
reasonable supposition that whatever people used flint or quartz,
pyrites, or other forms of iron ore for making fire, would call the
stone firestone The statement of Pliny that fire was first struck out of
flint by Pyrodé, the son of Cilix, Mr. Evans thinks, is a myth which
points to the use of silex and pyrites, rather than to steel.
Mr. Thomas Wilson calls my attention to a discovery of a pyrites nodule
by M. Gaillard, in a flint workshop on the island of Guiberon in
Brittany. The piece bore traces of use. Mr. Wilson thinks that the
curved flakes of flint like the one figured, found so numerously, were
used with pyrites as strike-a-lights. The comparative rarity of pyrites
is, perhaps, because it is easily decomposed and disintegrates in
unfavorable situations in a short time, so that the absence of pyrites
does not militate against the theory that it was used. A subcylindrical
nodule of pyrites 2½ inches long and bruised at one end was found in the
cave of Les Eyzies, in the valley of Vézère, Perigord, mentioned in
Reliquae Aquitanicæ, page 248. This is supposed to have been a
strike-a-light.