Homer, _Hymn to Mercury_, 108-111 (where a line has been lost; see the note of Messrs. Allen and Sikes); Theophrastus, _Histor. plant._ v. 9. 6; _id._, _De igne_, ix. 64; Hesychius, _s.v._ στορεύς; Schol. on Apollonius Rhodius, _Argon._ i. 1184; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xvi. 208; Seneca, _Nat. Quaest._ ii. 22; A. Kuhn, _Herabkunft des Feuers_, 2nd Ed., pp. 35-41; H. Blumner, _Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Künste_, ii. 354-356. Theophrastus gives the name of _athragene_ to the plant which, next to or equally with ivy, makes the best board; he compares it to a vine. Pliny (_l.c._) seems to have identified it with a species of wild vine. According to Sprengel, the _athragene_ is the _Clematis cirrhosa_ of Linnaeus, the French _clématite à vrilles_. See Dioscorides, ed. C. Sprengel, vol. ii. p. 641. As to the kinds of wood employed by the Romans in kindling fire we have no certain evidence, as Pliny and Seneca may have merely copied from Theophrastus. Footnote 815: Pausanias, i. 31. 6, with my note. CHAPTER XVII THE ORIGIN OF PERPETUAL FIRES [Sidenote: The custom of maintaining a perpetual fire probably originated in the difficulty of making fire by friction.] Whatever superstitions may have gathered about it in the course of ages, the custom of maintaining a perpetual fire probably sprang from a simple consideration of practical convenience. The primitive mode of making fire by the friction of wood is laborious at all times, and it is especially so in wet weather. Hence the savage finds it convenient to keep a fire constantly burning or smouldering in order to spare himself the troubling of kindling it. This convenience becomes a necessity with people who do not know how to make fire. That there have been such tribes down to our own time is affirmed by witnesses whose evidence we have no reason to doubt. Thus Mr. E. H. Man, who resided eleven years in the Andaman Islands and was intimately acquainted with the natives, tells us that, being ignorant of [Sidenote: Some races said to be ignorant of the means of making fire.] the art of making fire, they take the utmost pains to prevent its extinction. When they leave a camp intending to return in a few days, they not only take with them one or more smouldering logs, wrapped in leaves if the weather be wet, but they also place a large burning log or faggot of suitable wood in some sheltered spot, where it smoulders for several days and can be easily rekindled when it is needed. While it is the business of the women to gather the wood, the duty of keeping up the fires both at home and in travelling by land or sea is not confined to them, but is undertaken by persons of either sex who have most leisure or are least burdened.[816] The Russian traveller, Baron Miklucho-Maclay, who lived among the natives of the Maclay coast of northern New Guinea at a time when they