The first important step which man made in the path of progress was the acquisition of fire. In all probability, man came to the knowledge of it by accident, either by meeting with some substance which had been set on fire by lightning or volcanic heat, or by the friction of pieces of wood setting a light to some very inflammable matter. [Illustration: Fig. 7.--The Production of Fire.] In order to obtain fire, man of the quaternary epoch may have employed the same means as those made use of by the American aborigines, at the time when Christopher Columbus first fell in with them on the shores of the New World--means which savage nations existing at the present day still put in practice. He rubbed two pieces of dry wood one against the other, or turned round and round with great rapidity a stick sharpened to a point, having placed the end of it in a hole made in the trunk of a very dry tree (fig. 7). As among the savages of the present day we find certain elementary mechanisms adapted to facilitate the production of fire, it is not impossible that these same means were practised at an early period of the human race. It would take a considerable time to set light to two pieces of dry wood by merely rubbing them against one another; but if a bow be made use of, that is, the chord of an arc fixed firmly on a handle, so as to give a rapid revolution to a cylindrical rod of wood ending in a point which entered into a small hole made in a board, the board may be set on fire in a few minutes. Such a mode of obtaining fire may have been made use of by the men who lived in the same epoch with the mammoth and other animals, the species of which are now extinct. The first rudiments of combustion having been obtained, so as to serve, during the daytime, for the purposes of warmth and cooking food, and during the night, for giving light, how was the fire to be kept up? Wood from the trees that grew in the district, or from those which were cast up by the currents of the rivers or sea; inflammable mineral oils; resin obtained from coniferous trees; the fat and grease of wild animals; oil extracted from the great cetaceans;--all these substances must have assisted in maintaining combustion, for the purposes both of warmth and light. The only fuel which the Esquimaux of the present day have either to warm their huts or light them during the long nights of their gloomy climate, is the oil of the whale and seal, which, burnt in a lamp with a short wick, serves both to cook their food and also to warm and illumine their huts. Even, nowadays, in the Black Forest (Duchy of Baden), instead of candles, long splinters of very dry beech are sometimes made use of, which are fixed in a horizontal position at one end and lighted at the other. This forms an economical lamp, which is really not to be despised.