unacccountable fires, are of no rarer occurrence
than heretofore. It was thought, for a
moment, that a remedy might be found in the
employment of unusual preparations of phosphorus;
but the cheapness of the old lucifers made
them victorious. Even if they had not driven
their rivals out of the market by lowness of
price, the mere trouble of fetching the new
invention from unaccustomed shops was sufficient
to make, thoughtless people indifferent to what
did not fall in with their private convenience,
though it might with the public and general
security. Thus, the Match Question becomes
of growing importance, in its relations both to
social economy and to public health. It nearly
rivals the Italian Question in more than one
particular.

Amongst the dangers attending these little
fire-generators, one which is little known, and of
which slight, if any, warning has been given, is
their liability to spontaneous combustion. No
prudent person will keep them in his house
except in incombustible vessels or boxes, such
as those made of earthenware, metal, or stone.
If this precaution could be insisted upon, it
would almost go to the complete suppression of
matches tipped with white phosphorus, i. e. that
which is white before it is coloured artificially
But what have we to replace this popular
method of rubbing a light? Therein lies the
difficulty. True, we still have red or amorphous
phosphorus; but this is not easy to obtain pure.
Moreover, it is, perhaps, not quite so innocent
as it pretends to be. An opinion has already
been expressed that white phosphorus may be
regenerated or reproduced; that is to say, that
red phosphorus may, with time, resume its
original molecular state, and consequently
recover all its chemical and organoleptic properties.
But, as long as no fact of poisoning or
setting fire to houses can be justly laid to the
charge of red phosphorus, we may continue to
employ it as we have hitherto done, when we
can get it.

All things considered, therefore, it seems
possible that persons who do not like being grilled
in their beds to a delicate brown, will have to
return, for safety's sake, to the prosaic tinder-
box, the primitive flint and steel, which,
nevertheless, as Monsieur Bautigny (d'Evreux)
observes, is not without its poetry, and might
furnish matter for a long natural philosophical
canto. The bard of the tinder-box could attune
his harp to beds of silex, its different varieties,
its formation, its relative age, its extraction;
then he could strike the chords of iron ore,
mines, smelting-houses, and forges. Coal, its
origin, and its excavation, would most suitably
be sung in a minor (or a miner) key; while
steel would afford occasion for a dashing passage
in all the sharps. Tinder opens the door for a
pleasant excursion throughout the whole range
of vegetable tissues; its immersion in azotate of
potash leads the way to a brilliant chemical
episode. With the flint and steel in hand and the
tinder-box beneath them, the poet cannot strike
a light without touching on some of the most
thorny questions of physical science; he is fairly
launched on the full stream of the Correlation
of Physical Forces. He strikes away; a spark
falls. It is the transformation of motion into
heat. His peroration, his coda, his grand winding
up of the symphony, is composed of the
production of heat and light by the combustion
of steel in the oxygen of atmospheric air, the
combustion of the Organic tissue of the tinder
favoured by the oxygen of the azotate, the
decomposition of the azotate, the disengagement
of oxide of azote, and the formation of
water, carbonic acid, and carbonate of potash.
Who would have thought that a tinder-box
contained all this? It is evident that, in a scientific
point of view, flint and steel have no reason to
envy phosphoric lucifers, while in other respects
they are greatly their superiors; the tinder-
box poisons nobody, and sets fire to nobody's
house.

At the mention of suppressing lucifer matches,
it may be remarked, for the hundredth time,
that it we once begin to suppress everything
that may possibly prove injurious, we shall
have to proscribe almost everything which is
subservient to our daily wants; such as knives,
coal, wine, spirituous liquors, and kitchen fires,
to which may be added the upper stories of
dwelling-houses, seeing that people may kill
themselves therefrom by jumping out of the
window—and also wells, because you may
drown yourself therein, purposely or
accidentally. But the objection may be refuted
in half a word: there are some things which
offer more advantages than dangers; others, on
the contrary, offer more dangers than
advantages. Lucifers are in the latter case;
consequently, they ought to be got rid of.

How? Our Gallic allies propose to do
it by a coup d'état, through the agency of the
imperial government. It is clear that so long
as "allumettes chimiques" are made by their
present makers, and sold at their present prices,
no consideration, advice, or prohibition will be
in the least available to check their use. Now,
in France, there are articles—videlicet, tobacco
and gunpowder—of which the government has
the exclusive monopoly, deriving from them a
considerable revenue. The state alone is allowed
to manufacture them, and sells them at its own
prices, having no rival or competitor. There
can be no snuff-mill erected in the next street,
no powder-mill built on the neighbouring heath,
to affect either article in the market. Any
private enterprise of the kind is contrary to law,
and would be put down as instantly and as
severely as an establishment for the coining of
bad money, or the forging of bank-notes. The
French government is, therefore, prayed to
include allumettes chimiques amongst its monopolies,
to manufacture them exclusively, and to
sell them by its own agents, of which it has a
complete and organised body dispersed over the
whole surface of the empire, in the shape of the
Débits de Tabac, or tobacco-shops, which are
government appointments, wide-spread objects
of patronage, given, in the majority of cases, to