In tracing these stages in technologic growth, it is to be remembered that the Seri are so primitive as to betray some of the very beginnings of activital concepts; that to them zoic potencies are the paramount powers of the cosmos; that in their simple thought fire is a bestial rather than a physical phenomenon; that in their naive philosophy the production of devouring flame is of a kind with vital birth and a similitude of sexual reproduction; and that according to their notions the conquest of quarry, including fire, is made practicable only by aid of the mystical potencies of beasts and flames gained through invocatory use of symbols or actual organs. In the Seri tongue the term “fire-drill” is _kaak_, an indefinite generic meaning “kind” or “strong kind”, with an egocentric connotation (“Our-Strong-Kind”), as in the proper tribal designation _Kun-kaak_ or _Km-kaak;_ while the term for the nether fire-stick or hearth is either _maam_ (“woman”, or more properly “mother”), or else (and more commonly) _kaak-maam_, which may be rendered “Kind-Mother”—the “Kind”, as among primitive folk generally, comprising both men and tutelary beasts, and in this case fire as the most mysterious of the beasts; there is thus a suggestive analogy between the designation for the fire-producing apparatus and that for the tribe itself. It should be noted that the zoic concept of fire is widespread among the more primitive peoples of various provinces, and sometimes persists in recognizable form in higher culture (witness the fire-breathing dragons of various mythologies, the “Red Flower” notion gathered in India by Kipling, etc.); also that the ascription of sex to the fire-sticks is prevalent among North American tribes, and at once helps to interpret the development of the fire-drill, fire-syringe, and other primitive devices, such, for example, as those so fully described by Hough,[276] and serves to explain the otherwise obscure genesis of the fire-sense, which must have accompanied and shaped that most significant of all steps in human progress, the conquest of fire. [276] Fire-making apparatus in the U. S. National Museum; Smithsonian Report for 1888, pt II, 1890, pp. 531-587, and elsewhere.