AT one time, the natives were said not to have known the art of making fire! Calder declares (J.A.I, pp. 19-20): “They were ignorant of any method of procuring fire.” His statement (p. 32) that “no amount of friction could possibly ignite the woods of this colony” is incorrect, as we shall see directly; although the ignition could probably only be produced in hot dry weather. Dove makes a similar statement, only he uses more words to say it in (I. p. 250), and Backhouse (p. 99) “learned that the aborigines of V. D. Land had no artificial method of obtaining fire, before their acquaintance with Europeans; they say they obtained it first from the sky–probably meaning by lightning.” Furneaux reports to have found in one of the huts (Cook's Sec. Voy. Bk. I. ch. vii.) “the stone they strike fire with, and tinder made of bark, but of what tree could not be distinguished.” La Billardiere (I. ch. v. p. 222) met with baskets containing “pieces of flint and fragments of the bark of a tree as soft as the best tinder. These savages, undoubtedly procure themselves fire by striking two pieces of flint together.” Mortimer relates (p. 20) that in some of the baskets were a few flints and stones, and a little dried grass; from which circumstance I conclude they produce fire by collision.”