Happy Fire

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers’ gardens.

Douglas William Jerrold

While this Instructables article about how to start a fire using flint is helpful, it doesn’t educate on what flint is. That’s where this Geology.com article about flint comes in: “Flint is a hard, tough chemical or biochemical sedimentary rock that breaks with a conchoidal fracture. It is a form of microcrystalline quartz that is typically called ‘chert’ by geologists.” And, before it was found to create sparks when struck with steel, it “has been used by humans to make stone tools for at least two million years.”

About the author

Douglas William Jerrold (3 January 1803 – 8 June 1857) was an English dramatist and writer. Jerrold’s father, Samuel Jerrold, was an actor and lessee of the little theatre of Wilsby near Cranbrook, Kent. In 1807 the family moved to Sheerness, where Jerrold spent his childhood. He occasionally took a child part on the stage, but his father’s profession held little attraction for him. In December 1813 he joined the guard ship Namur, where he had Jane Austen’s brother Charles Austen as captain, and served as a midshipman until the Treaty of Paris in 1815. He saw nothing of Napoleonic Wars save a number of wounded soldiers from Waterloo, but he retained an affection for the sea.