doubt, therefore, they commit themselves to the Atlantic in the belief that it is as passable as those lakes and fjords which they have already successfully dared, and that beyond its waves lies a land which they are never destined to reach.
The submerged continent of Lemuria, in what is now the Indian Ocean, is considered to afford an explanation of many difficulties in the distribution of organic life, and I think the existence of a Miocene Atlantis will be found to have a strong elucidative bearing on subjects of greater interest than the migration of the lemming. At all events, if it can be shown that land existed in former ages where the North Atlantic now rolls, not only is a motive found for these apparently suicidal migrations, but also a strong collateral proof that what we call instincts are but the blind and sometimes even prejudicial inheritance of previously-acquired experience.—Popular Science Review.
| MATCHES. |
By JOHN A. GARVER, A. B.
AN article in The Popular Science Monthly of last November gave an interesting account of the early history of fire, showing how that important element was obtained in primitive times. We will now consider the development of the modern art of extemporizing fire. In a match-making age those crude and ancient processes are regarded with curiosity, but that they ever possessed any practical value is scarcely realized; while the use of our prompt and cheap devices for producing combustion has grown to be such a matter of course that a thought is hardly given to the time when they did not exist. During the whole of the last century, however, and in the early part of the present century, the invention of a safe and trustworthy agent for furnishing fire was regarded as one of the great wants of the age; and fifty years ago a tinder-box was as much an indispensable article of household economy as is the well-filled match-safe to-day. The sulphur-match now in use is not so old as our railroads, and but a few years ago there occurred frequent examples of burns caused by the explosion of the match and the projection of its burning pieces.
Among the more civilized nations, the tinder-box, with the flint and steel, became known in the fourteenth century, and continued to be used, notwithstanding the other methods, down to the invention of the lucifer-match. The tinder was formed by the partial combustion of a linen or cotton rag, and, being ignited by striking a spark upon it from the flint and steel, communicated its fire in turn to the match.
When phosphorus was first discovered, two hundred years ago, it
