(*Footnote. This mode of kindling fire is not peculiar to Sumatra: we read of the same practice in Africa and even in Kamtschatka. It is surprising, but confirmed by abundant authority, that many nations of the earth have at certain periods, been ignorant of the use of fire. To our immediate apprehension human existence would seem in such circumstances impossible. Every art, every convenience, every necessary of life, is now in the most intimate manner connected with it: and yet the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, and Greeks acknowledged traditions concerning its first discovery in their respective countries. But in fact if we can once suppose a man, or society of men, unacquainted with the being and uses of this element, I see no difficulty in conceiving the possibility of their supporting life without it; I mean in the tropical climates; and of centuries passing before they should arrive at the important discovery. It is true that lightning and its effects, volcanoes, the firing of dry substances by fortuitous attrition, or of moist, by fermentation, might give them an idea of its violent and destructive properties; but far from being thence induced to appropriate and apply it they would, on the contrary, dread and avoid it, even in its less formidable appearances. They might be led to worship it as their deity, but not to cherish it as their domestic. There is some reason to conclude that the man who first reduced it to subjection and rendered it subservient to the purposes of life procured it from the collision of two flints; but the sparks thus produced, whether by accident or design, might be observed innumerable times without its suggesting a beneficial application. In countries where those did not present themselves the discovery had, most probably, its origin in the rubbing together of dry sticks, and in this operation, the agent and subject coexisting, flame, with its properties and uses, became more immediately apparent. Still, as no previous idea was conceived of this latent principle, and consequently no search made, no endeavours exerted, to bring it to light, I see not the impossibility a priori of its remaining almost as long concealed from mankind as the properties of the loadstone or the qualities of gunpowder.)