of Carolina, before they became acquainted, with the use of steel and flints.  “They got their fire,” says he, “with sticks, which by vehement collision, or rubbing together, take fire.”  “You are to understand,” he adds, “that the two sticks they use to strike fire withal, are never of one sort of wood, but always differ from each other.”  Indeed it is probable that this method has been very generally practised.  Seneca makes mention of it in the 2d book, chap. 22. of his Nat.  Quaest., and he specifies some of the kinds of wood known by the shepherds to be fit for the purpose, “sicut lauris, hederae, et alia in hunc usum nota pastoribus.”  This is noticed by Mr Jones, who gives it as his opinion that the lauris, here spoken of, is the bay-tree, which, according to the poet Lucretius, is remarkable for its inflammability.  The reader may desire to see the opinion of Mr Jones as to the origin of man’s acquaintance with fire.—­It is certainly worthy of consideration, and supposing it restricted to the parent of our race, and his immediate offspring, may be held with no small confidence.  It embraces indeed a wider field than can possibly be investigated in this place.  “The first family,” says he, “placed by the Creator upon this earth, offered sacrifices; which being an article of religious duty, they were certainly possessed of the means of performing it, and consequently of the knowledge and use of fire, without which it could not be practised.  The next generation presents us with artificers in brass and iron, which could not possibly be wrought without the complete knowledge of fire; neither indeed could any works of art be well carried on.  The account of this affair in the Bible is much more natural, because it is much more agreeable to the goodness of God, and the dignity of the human species, than to suppose, on the principles of a wild and savage philosophy (alluding to Dr Hawkesworth’s poor conjectures, as Mr Jones styles them), that men were left ignorant of the use of an element intended for their accommodation and support.  To interdict a man from the use of fire and water, was accounted the same in effect as to send him out of life; so that if men, upon the original terms of their creation, were thus interdicted by the Creator himself, as the Heathen mythologists supposed them to be, they were sent into life upon such terms as others were sent out of it.  If we admit any such gloomy suppositions, where shall we stop?  If mankind were left destitute in respect to the knowledge of fire, perhaps they were left without language, without food, without clothing, without reason, and in a worse condition than the beasts, who are born with the proper knowledge of life, but man receives it by education; therefore he who taught the beasts by instinct, taught man by information.”  Much might be said for and against this mode of reasoning, which this place, already so fully occupied, will not admit.  The history of fire is involved in