ORIGIN OF WEST AFRICAN CROSSBOWS BALFOUR. 649 



reached the more remote tribes of yet lower culture, such as the 

 Ba-Fan and Mpongwe, amongst whom the stock of the crossbow is 

 merely split instead of being- hinged. The simplification is in any 

 case so slight that it can hardly be said that the crossbows of the 

 Gaboon district are really a degenerate development, as compared 

 with such a European form as I have suggested may have been their 

 prototype. If on the one hand the release mechanism is slightly 

 degraded, on the other hand in point of finished workmanship the 

 Gaboon examples are far superior to the Norwegian. The change 

 from a hinged stock to a split stock is associated with the gradual 

 disappearance of the arrow groove, owing, no doubt, to the use of 

 much lighter arrows which are held in position with wax or gum. 

 This method of causing the dart to adhere to the stock is employed 

 also in the case of the native hinged crossbows, in which the arrow 

 groove is often well defined, though usually much less so than in 

 most European crossbows; in this respect, too, therefore, the Gaboon 

 type is linked to the European indirectly by the Nigerian type. It 

 is most unlikely that the crossbow-using natives of the Gaboon re- 

 ceived the idea of making this weapon direct from Europeans, since 

 they appear to have only recently migrated toward the coast from 

 the interior. In their former home they would have been out of 

 reach of contact with the early European explorers; and apart from 

 this, the special features of this local type are most readily ac- 

 counted for as due to indirect connection with the European prototype 

 and to the distance from the original center of dispersal in West 

 Africa. 



The method of release with a divided stock is paralleled, as far 

 as I am aware, in but one other region of the world. The well- 

 known and specialized repeating crossbow, nou koung, of China is 

 discharged in a manner closely analogous to the mechanism of the 

 "West African and Norwegian forms which I have described. I must 

 not here enter into the possible affinities of this Asiatic form, but 

 merely refer to it as having certain marked characteristics in common 

 with these western types of crossbows. 



As regards the Ba-Kwiri crossbow of the Kamerun described by 

 Dr. von Luschan, we may judge from its structure that, while it is 

 probably allied to the other West African forms, it is a strictly 

 degenerate variety of the weapon as regards its mode of discharge, 

 since there is no mechanism for the release, which is effected by 

 merely pushing the bowstring out of the notch by hand. The form 

 has evidently been much modified through imitation of firearms, as 

 the form of stock and the long barrel prove. We must regard this 

 form as an aberrant local type which has developed largely upon 

 lines of its own, diverging from the more usual type. 



