weapon which shortens action. We may hold, without undue credulity, that the throwing-arm is common to beasts, after a fashion, and to man. Among the socalled 'missile fishes' the Toxotes, or Archer, unerringly brings down insects with a drop of water when three or four feet high in the air. The Chaetodon, or archer fish of Japan, is kept in a glass vase, and fed by holding flies at the end of rod a few inches above the surface: it strikes them with an infallible aim. This process is repeated, among the mammalia, by the Llama, the Guanaco and their congeners, who propel their acrid and fetid saliva for some distance and with excellent aim. And stone-throwing held its own for many an age, as we read in the fifteenth century:— Use eke the cast of stone with slynge or honde; II. The stroke or blow which led to the cut would be seen exemplified in the felidæ, by the terrible buffet of the lion, by the clawing of the tiger and the bear, and by the swing of the trunk of the half-reasoner with the hand.' Man also would observe that the zebra and the quagga (so called from its cry, wag-ga, wag-ga3), the horse and the ass, the camel, the giraffe, and even the cow, defend themselves with the kick or hoof-blow; while the ostrich, the swan, and the larger birds of prey assault with a flirt or stroke of the wing. The aries or sea-ram (Delphinus orca) charges with a butt. The common whale raises the head with such force that it has been held capable of sinking a whaler moreover, this mammal uses the huge caudal fin or tail in battle with man and beast; for instance, when engaged with the fox-shark or thresher (Carcharias vulpes). These, combined with the force of man's doubled fist, would suggest the 'noble art' of boxing: it dates from remote antiquity; witness the cestus or knuckle-duster of the classics, Greeks, Romans, and Lusitanians. So far from being confined to Great or Greater Britain, as some suppose, it is still a favourite not only with the Russian peasants, but also with the The sepia (squid, cuttle-fish, Loligo vulgaris) defends itself by discharging its 'ink-bag' embedded in the liver, and escapes in the blackened water. This is as true a defence as a shield. 2 From the Greek Tò Tógov, the bow (and arrow, Iliad, viii. 296), which seems to be a congener of the Latin taxus, the yew-tree, a favourite material for the weapon. Hence taxus, like the Scandinavian fr or ýr, the Keltic jubar, and the Slavonian tisu, all meaning the yew-tree, denote the bow as well. The Skalds called the bow also almr (elm-tree), and askr, or mountain-ash, the μeλía, which the Greeks applied to the spear. From τόξον came τοξικὸν, 'arrow-poison, the Latin toxicum, whose use survives in our exaggerated term intoxicating li quors. This I know to my cost, having offended a 4 Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, ii. chap. 2. 5 Not unlike the name of a certain Australian Wagga Wagga which has been heard in the English law-courts. • In Land and Water doubts have been thrown upon these single combats of the whale and thresher. See the late Mr. Buckland's papers (October 2, 1880); Lord Archibald Campbell's sketch; and the same paper, February 26, 1881. Those on board the wrecked cruiser H.M.S. Griffon, myself included, witnessed a fight between whale and shark in the Bay of Biafra (1862?). The Carcharias family takes its name from the sharp and jagged teeth, and τῶν καρχαρῶν ὀδόντων, Hausas, Moslem negroids who did such good service in the Ashanti war. Α curious survival of the feline armature is the Hindu's Wágh-nakh. Following Demmin, Colonel A. Lane Fox' was in error when he described this 'tiger's-claw' as 'an Indian weapon of treachery belonging to a secret society, and invented about A.D. 1659.' Demmin 2 as erroneously attributes the Wágh-nakh to Sívají, the Prince of Maráthá-land in Western India, who traitorously used it upon Afzal Khan, the Moslem General of Aurangzeb, sent (A.D. 1659) to put down his rebellion.3 A meeting of the chiefs was agreed upon, and the Moslem, quitting his army, advanced with a single servant; he wore a thin robe, and carried only a straight sword. Sívají, descending from the fort, assumed a timid and hesitating air, and to all appearance was unarmed. But he wore mail under his flimsy white cotton coat, and besides a concealed dagger, he carried his 'tiger's-claw.' The Khan looked with contempt at the crouching and diminutive mountain rat,' whom the Moslems threatened to bring back in cages; but, at the moment of embracing, the Maráthá FIG. 1.-INDIAN WAGH-NAKH. FIG. 2.-WAGH-NAKH, USED BY MARÁTHÁS (India Museum.) struck his Wágh-nakh into his adversary's bowels and despatched him with his dagger. The Wágh-nakh in question is still kept as a relic, I am told, by the Bhonslá family. Outside the hand you see nothing but two solid gold rings encircling the index and the minimus; these two are joined inside by a steel bar, which serves as a connecting base to three or four sharp claws, thin enough to fit between and to be hidden by the fingers of a half-closed hand. The attack is by 1 Anthrop. Collection, p. 180. Demmin, however, is additionally incorrect by making the article 'two and a half feet in length' (Arms and Armour, p. 413, Bell's edition, London, 1877). In Catalogue of Indian Art in the South Kensington Museum, by Lieut. H. H. Cole, R.E. (p. 313), Sívají is made to murder the Moslem with the bichwa,' or scorpion, a 'curved double blade.' This probably refers to the dagger which made 'sicker.' 2 P. 402, where he calls Sivaji' Sevaja. 3 Elphinstone's History, ii. 468. It is, they say, adored at the old fortress and Maráthá capital, Sattára (= Sát-istara, the seven stars or Pleiades). Here, too, is Sívají's Sword Bhawani,' a Genoa blade of great length and fine temper. Mrs. Guthrie, who saw the latter, describes it (vol. i. p. 426) as a 'fine Ferrara (?) blade, four feet in length, with a spike upon the hilt to thrust with.' She also notices the smallness of the grip. The Indian Museum of South Kensington contains a bracelet of seven tiger's-claws mounted in gold, with a claw clasp (No. 593, 1868). M. Rousselet, who visited Baroda in 1864, describes in his splendid volume one of the Gaekhwar or Baroda Rajah's favourite spectacula, the 'naki-ka-kausti ' (kushti). The nude combatants were armed with tiger's-claws' of horn; formerly, when these were of steel, the death of one of the athletes was unavoidable. The weapons, fitted into a kind of handle, were fastened by thongs to the closed right hand. The men, drunk with Bhang or Indian hemp, rushed upon each other and tore like tigers at face and body; forehead-skins would hang in shreds; necks and ribs would be laid open, and not unfrequently one or both would bleed to death. The ruler's excitement on these occasions often grew to such a pitch that he could scarcely restrain himself from imitating the movements of the duellists. ripping open the belly and I have heard of a poisoned Wágh-nakh which may have been suggested by certain poison rings in ancient and medieval Europe.1 The date of invention is absolutely unknown, and a curious and instructive modification of it was made by those Indians-in-Europe, the Gypsies. III. The thrust would be suggested by the combats of the goat, the stag, and black cattle, including the buffalo and the wild bull, all of which charge at speed with the head downwards, and drive the horns into the enemy's body. The gnu (Catoblepas G.) and other African antelopes, when pressed by the hunter, keep him at bay with the point. In Europe 'hurt of hart,' a ripping and tearing thrust, has brought many a man to the grave. The hippopotamus, a dangerous animal unduly despised, dives under the canoe, like the walrus, rises suddenly, and with its lower tusks, of the hardest ivory, drills two holes in the offending bottom. The black rhinoceros, fiercest and most irritable of African fauna, though graminivorous, has one or two horns of wood-like fibre-bundles resting upon the strongly-arched nasal bones, and attached by an extensive apparatus of muscles and tendons. This armature, loose when the beast is at peace, becomes erect and immovable in rage, thus proving in a special manner its only use-that of war. It is a formidable dagger that tears open the elephant and passes through the saddle and its padding into the ribs of a horse. The extinct sabre-toothed tiger (Machairodus latidens), with one incisor and five canines, also killed with a thrust. So, amongst birds, the bittern, the peacock, and the American white crane peck or stab at the eye; the last-named has been known to drive its long sharp mandibles deep into the pursuer's bowels, and has been caught by presenting to it a gun-muzzle: the bird, mistaking the hole, strikes at it and is caught by the beak.2 The hern defends herself during flight by presenting the sharp long beak to the falcon. The pheasant and partridge, the domestic cock and quail, to mention no others, use their spurs with a poniard's thrust; the Argus-pheasant of India, the American Jacaná (Parra), the horned screamer (Palamedea), the wing-wader of Australia (Gregory), and the plover of Central Africa (Denham and Claperton), carry weapons upon their wings. FIG. 3. According to Pliny (viii. 38) the dolphins which enter the Nile are armed with a knife-edged spur on the back to protect themselves from the crocodiles. Cuvier refers this allusion to the Squalus centrina or Spinax of Linnæus. The European 'file-fish' (Balistes capriscus), found in a fossil state, and still existing, though rare in British waters, remarkably shows the efficiency, beauty, and variety of that order's armature. It pierces its enemy from beneath by a strong erectile and cirrated spine on the first anterior dorsal; the base of the spear is expanded and perforated, and a bolt from the supporting plate passes freely through it. 1 Pliny, xxxii. 6. 1. BALISTES CAPRISCUS ; 2 Thompson's Passions of Animals, p. 225. When the spine is raised, a hollow at the back receives a prominence from the next bony ray, which fixes the point in an erect position. Like the hammer of a fire-piece at full cock, the spear cannot be forced down till the prominence is withdrawn, as by pulling the trigger. This mechanism, says the learned and experienced Professor Owen,' may be compared with the fixing and unfixing of a bayonet: when the spine is bent down it is received into a groove in the supporting plate, and thus it offers no impediment to swimming. The pugnacious and voracious little stickleback' (Gasterosteus) is similarly provided. The 'bull-head' (Cottus diceraus, Pallas 2) bears a multibarbed horn on its dorsum, exactly resembling the spears of the Eskimos and the savages of South America and Australia. The yellow-bellied 'surgeon' or lancet-fish (Acanthurus) is armed, in either ocean, with a long spine on each side of the tail; with this lance it defends itself dexterously against its many enemies. The Naseus fronticornis (Lacépède) bears, besides the horn-muzzle, trenchant spear-formed blades in the 1 Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of Vertebrates, i. 193. 2 Prim. Warfare, i. p. 22. pointed and serrated tail. The sting-fish or adder-pike (Trachinus vipera) has necessitated amputation of the wounded limb: the dorsals, as well as the opercular spines, have deep double grooves in which the venomous mucous secretion is lodged a hint to dagger-makers. The sting-rays (Raia trygon and R. histrix') twist the long slender tail round the object of attack and cut the surface with the strong notched and spiny edge, inflicting a wound not easily healed. The sting, besides being poisonous, has the especial merit of breaking off in the wound it is extensively used by the savages of the Fiji, the Gambier, and the Pellew Islands, of Tahiti, Samoa, and many of the Low Islands.2 These properties would suggest poisoned weapons which cannot be extracted. Such are the arrows of the Bushman, the Shoshoni, and the Macoinchi of Guiana, culminating in the highly-civilised stiletto of hollow glass. The sword-fish (Xiphias), although a vegetable feeder, is mentioned by Pliny (xxxii. 6) as able to sink a ship. It is recorded to have killed a man when bathing in the Severn near Worcester. It attacks the whale, FIG. 7.-MÁDU OR MÁRU. Here may be offered a single proof how Man, living among, and dependent for food upon, the lower animals, borrowed from their habits and experience his earliest practice of offence and defence. The illustration represents a Singhauta,' 'Mádu' or 'Máru' (double dagger), made from the horns of the common Indian antelope, connected by crossbars. In its rude state, and also tipped with metal, it is still used as a weapon by Prim. Warfare, i. p. 21. 2 Ibid. ii. p. 22. The spiral horn is shown by Colonel Yule (Marco Polo, ii. 273, second edition) in an illustration as 'Monoceros and the Maiden.' The animal, however, appears from the short tail to be a tapir, not a rhinoceros. That learned and exact writer remarks that the unicorn supporter of the Royal Arms retains the narwhal horn. The main use of the latter in commerce is to serve as a core for the huge wax-candles lighted during the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church. So it is called in the Catalogue of the India Museum at South Kensington; the derivation is evidently from the Hindostani singh, a horn. |