WAR AND HUNTING. 



CHAPTER III. 



PROJECTILE WEAPONS AND THE SHEATH. 



Propulsive Power. — The Pea-shooter and its Powers. — An Attack repulsed.— Clay- 

 Bullets. — Puff and Dart. — The Sumpitan of Borneo, and its Arrows. — The 

 Zarahatana or Pucunha of South America, and its Arrows. — The Air-gun. — 

 Modern Firearms. — The Choetodon, or Archer-fish. — The Pneumatic Rail- 

 way. — The Throwing-stick and its Powers. — Australians, Esquimaux, and 

 New Caledonians. — Principle of the Sheath. — Waganda Spears. — Sheathed 

 Piercing Apparatus of the Gnat, Flea, and Bombylius. — Indian Tulwar and 

 Cat's Claw. — The Surgeon's Lancet, and Piercing Apparatus of the Gad-fly 

 and Mosquito. 



WE will now take some of the analogies between Projectile 

 Weapons of Art and Nature, selecting those in which the 

 propulsive power is air or gases within a tube. Whether the 

 weapon be a blow-gun, an air-gun, or a firearm of any descrip- 

 tion, the principle is the same. We will take them in succes- 

 sion, choosing first those of the simplest and most primitive 

 character. 



Taking ourselves as examples, and looking upon the toys of 

 children as precursors of more important inventions, we find 

 that the simplest and most primitive of projectiles is the 

 Pea-shooter, so familiar to all boys. 



Insignificant as is the little tin tube, and small as are the 

 missiles which are propelled through it, the blow which can be 

 struck by a pea properly shot is no trifle. At college I have 

 seen a night attack upon an undergraduate's rooms successfully 

 repelled by a pea- shooter made for the nonce of a glass tube, 

 the owner of the rooms having a taste for chemicals, and 

 possessing a fair stock of the usual apparatus. Though the 

 assaulted rooms were on the top set, and the assailants began 

 their storming approaches below, the peas were too much 



