EVOLUTION OF ARMS AND ARMOR 
By Bashford Dean 
As is well known there is in progress a considerable agitation of the question of the use of armor 
in the present European war. Many military experts advocate it, as well as armor experts such as 
Dr. Bashford Dean. They have in mind of course the hand to hand conflicts of trench warfare and the 
similar duel character of the fighting now going on in the Balkans. Dr. Dean considers it fair to believe 
that suitable armor would save the lives of hundreds of soldiers and that a single soldier properly armored 
would be the equal of many unarmored soldiers in trench warfare. He advises not only the shield, 
headpiece and corselet suggested by Sir A. Conan Doyle, but also groin and hip plates to give additional 
protection from schrapnel and spent balls. Any armor to be efficient against the high explosives of 
to-day must be of hardened steel, smooth, highly polished and in form as roundly curved as possible. 
Thus more frequently the bullet will glance off instead of penetrating. Dr. Dean’s article calls atten- 
tion to the marvelous armor collection recently put on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
in New York City, which gives an opportunity for the study of armor historically, and for a compara- 
tive study relative to the fitness of armor for practical service at the present time.— Tue Eprror. 
66 APPY is the 
Horace, “who can know the 
We may 
man,’ wrote 
causes of things.”’ 
to-day differ as to how the word “happy” 
is best defined, still we may each and all 
agree that there is a wholesome satis- 
faction in being able to apply widely 
and practically some “causal”’ principle 
of nature which we have discovered — 
often at the cost of labor and suffering. 
Let us take as an instance the principle 
which we call evolution. The zodlogists 
of the past half century have demon- 
strated the great truth that the beings 
of to-day have changed to a greater or 
less degree from their ancestral form and 
habit; and this “law” has already been 
the means of revising helpfully many of 
our ideas, not in biology alone but in 
various lines of human thought and 
enterprise, including science, theology 
and art. Thus in science we may now 
trace an evolution even of the solar 
system, in theology we can work out 
the genesis of a sect, and in art we are 
given the means of explaining step by 
step the development of an ornament 
ora style. And it is extraordinary how 
much Horatian satisfaction we get from 
being able to explain the causes or origin 
of things — even of everyday objects and 
the least of them, such as the position 
of buttons on our coat sleeve, or the 
colored lights in an apothecary’s shop. 
At first sight of course, one may say, 
how may we justly apply to all of these 
things the principle which prevails in 
living creatures. Creatures, says one, 
change because they vary in nature. 
Two fishes are never quite alike, nor 
even two peas in a pod, and in time these 
variations become more pronounced for 
some obscure cause or another, until 
the descendant in the thousandth genera- 
tion is quite unlike his forebear. But in 
living beings the changes are genetic, 
passed along from father to son. How 
then may this principle be used to explain 
the happenings of things which are not 
kith or kin? 
Truly this is a question not easy to 
answer. In certain cases however, the 
changes are all so clear that the objects 
have only to be placed in line to show 
that there has been happening a kind of 
evolution. When we turn the matter 
over in our minds we may explain the 
evolutional side of it all by showing 
that the things have developed because 
of real evolutional changes which took 
place in or were directed by neighboring 
organized beings. For instance we could 
certainly describe the evolution of the 
stomach in the series of backboned 
animals if we but knew what that organ 
had produced, secreted or excreted, from 
the beginning. Why therefore should 
we be surprised if, when we collect things 
357 
