Among the more common causes of fire (such as gas, candle, curtains taking fire, children playing with fire, stoves, &c.), it is remarkable how uniformly the same numbers occur under each head from year to year.  General laws obtain as much in small as in great events.  We are informed by the Post-Office authorities that about eight persons daily drop their letters into the post without directing them–we know that there is an unvarying percentage of broken heads and limbs received into the hospitals–and here we see that a regular number of houses take fire, year by year, from the leaping out of a spark, or the dropping of a smouldering pipe of tobacco.  It may indeed be a long time before another conflagration will arise from “a monkey upsetting a clotheshorse,” but we have no doubt such an accident will recur in its appointed cycle.

Although gas figures so largely as a cause of fire, it does not appear that its rapid introduction of late years into private houses has been attended with danger.  There is another kind of light, however, which the insurance offices look upon with terror, especially those who make it their business to insure farm property.  The assistant secretary of one of the largest fire-offices, speaking broadly, informed us that the introduction of the lucifer match caused them an annual loss of ten thousand pounds! In the foregoing list we see in how many ways they have given rise to fires.

Lucifers going off probably from heat 80
Children playing with lucifers 45
Rat gnawing lucifers 1
Jackdaw playing with lucifers 1
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One hundred and twenty-seven known fires thus arise from this single cause; and no doubt many of the twenty-five fires ascribed to the agency of cats and dogs were owing to their having thrown down boxes of matches at night—­which they frequently do, and which is almost certain to produce combustion.  The item “rat gnawing lucifer” reminds us to give a warning against leaving about wax lucifers where there are either rats or mice, for these vermin constantly run away with them to their holes behind the inflammable canvas, and eat the wax until they reach the phosphorus, which is ignited by the friction of their teeth.  Many fires are believed to have been produced by this singular circumstance.  How much, again, must lucifers have contributed to swell the large class of conflagrations whose causes are unknown!  Another cause of fire, which is of recent date, is the use of naphtha in lamps—­a most ignitable fluid when mixed in certain proportions with common air.  “A delightful novel” figures as a proximate, if not an immediate, cause of twenty-two fires.  This might be expected, but what can be the meaning of a fire caused by a high tide?  When we asked Mr. Braidwood the question, he answered, “Oh! we always look out for fires