Fire-Refusing Cane

Description

A pressed section of temperate running bamboo: one culm split lengthwise and flattened, 38 cm long, 2.1 cm across before splitting. Two nodes with pronounced supranodal ridges and remnants of papery sheath. One branchlet from the upper node bears five lanceolate leaves, 7–11 cm long, with tessellate venation. Culm straw-tan, leaves pale olive. Three nail holes pass through the lower internode.

Observations

In any enclosed building holding the culm, no surface or substance rises above 21.1 °C (70 °F). Combustion still occurs: flame forms, fuel smokes and soots. But nothing the flame touches gets warmer than the ceiling, so nothing chars or catches. Water does not boil. Tallow does not soften. The effect stops at the outer walls; open sheds and tents are unaffected. The specimen is sooted and unscorched.

The file

Compiled by C. R. Pellew, inspector to H.M. Consular Court at Tangier, after the fire office alleged fraud by a British subject. The office’s solicitors struck out one name throughout their copy, including on the label beneath the hair. Pellew’s notes are in the margins.

Claim no. 4417 — Benoliel, ship chandler

Fire claim and adjuster’s report, Strait Mutual Fire Office; copy annotated by C. R. Pellew, inspector, H.M. Consular Court, Tangier

Copy received 3 March 1899. Margin notes mine. — C.R.P.

Section A — Particulars of insured

Moses Benoliel, British subject (Gibraltar), ship chandler below the Bab el-Marsa. Stock insured for £600. Clerk living on the premises: ███████.

Section C — Description of loss

“Fire in the loft from about ten at night on 11 November until near seven. Nothing is burnt. Everything is black. I claim for smoke and water only: 340 fathoms Manila rope, 96 lb tallow candles, the bindings of four ledgers.” Amount claimed: £212 4s.

Margin: A man who claims less than he could is either honest or clever.

Adjuster’s visit

W. Hendry, adjuster. Rafters sooted, not charred. Candles upright, edges sharp, though tallow softens near 95 °F. Ledgers legible. The Six’s thermometer on the loft post shows a maximum of 70 °F. Eleven neighbours saw flames at the shutters until dawn. A split cane, sooted, is nailed above the loft door.

A fire was lit in order to be seen. I cannot yet say how it was kept from burning anything.

Test of the hair

███████ was in the loft throughout. With his consent I cut a lock of his hair. In the loft I held half in a candle flame for a count of twenty; it did not curl. In the street the other half was gone in a second. The unburnt half is pinned here.

Margin: Still pinned. Dark brown, three inches, cut square.

Statement of the clerk

███████ states that he lit nothing and sat on the rope all night, “the coolest place in Tangier”. He bought the cane for two reales from Hmed ben Abdesselam, a shepherd of Mesnana, whose people keep one over every thatched fold.

Margin: The shepherd confirms it. The folds never burn, he says, but the lambs born in them stay small.

Decision on liability

The Office declines liability. A fire that burns for nine hours and damages nothing is not a fire within the meaning of the policy. No proceedings will be taken against ███████.

Margin: The solicitors say the name was struck to avoid libel. Benoliel says the clerk sailed for Oran in April and asked that his name not follow him. The Office had struck it before he asked.

Genetic analysis

Sequenced from node tissue in 1987 and 2009. Apart from one locus the genome is ordinary Phyllostachys, GC content 44.8%. Upstream of an HSFA2-like gene, the transcription factor that switches on heat protection, the promoter carries 21 heat-shock elements (nGAAnnTTCn). Plants usually have two to four, all facing forwards. Here every copy is inverted, and both readings agree on the count. The 1987 report declines to suggest how a reversed switch in a dead culm could reach the walls of a building.

Cultivation

Not cultivated. The culm was cut and dried before 1898 and its nodes hold no viable buds. A 1952 survey of the Mesnana hillside found the thatched folds gone, no stand of the bamboo, and no trace of the shepherd’s family.

The sheet is kept alone in the stone annexe, for reasons given under Effects.

Effects

In the winter of 1912, with the culm in the main Herbarium, the boiler ran without fault but no radiator rose above 21 °C. The Glasshouse orchids on the same boiler lost forty plants before anyone thought to move the drawer.

Annexe staff bring tea in vacuum flasks. The kettle on the annexe stove steams but never boils.

The annexe has had two electrical fires, in 1958 and 1994. Both were found the next morning from the soot.