POTSONED ARROWS OF THE ABORS AND MISHMIS OF NORTH-EAST INDIA. 911 



and is 735 mm. (29 inches) in length and 180 mm. (7 inches) in circumference, and 

 is provided with a bamboo cover or lid and a sling made of a strip of cane 10 mm. 

 (^-inch) wide (Plate XCVIII, fig. 3). 



(b) Description of Abor and Mishmi Poisoned Arrows. 



As the Government of India arrows are practically identical with all the others 

 I have received from the Abor and Mishmi districts, whatever the poison they 

 bear, the following description applies to all of them. 



Their usual length is from 610 to 634 mm. (24 to 25 inches), but they vary in 

 length from 596 to 695 mm. (23^ to 27^ inches), the Government of India (Croton) 

 arrows being generally longer than the others. The shafts are pale yellow, close 

 grained, light in weight, but, at the same time hard and tough, and are made of 

 the wood of a bamboo whose species has not been determined.* 1 They are from 

 5 mm. (x(j-inch) to 6 '4 mm. ( T 4 ^-inch) in diameter, and are irregularly rounded or 

 quadrilateral. They terminate at one end in the " feathering," which is inserted in 

 pairs into two parallel and almost contiguous slits on opposite sides of the shaft, and 

 usually consists of portions of the leaf of a palm, most, kindly identified for me by 

 Mr J. S. Gamble, C.S.I., as Livistonia Jenlcinsiana, Griff. ; but in two of the arrows 

 contained in Colonel Bailey's quiver it consists of the actual feathers of a bird, only 

 one feather, however, being inserted into each side of the shaft (Plate XCIX, fig. 2). 



At the other end of the shaft is the iron arrow-head, rude in its workmanship, 

 generally broadly rounded and not sharply pointed at the end, and provided with 

 two barbs of irregular shape. In the several arrows examined the iron heads measure, 

 from the point of the head to the end of the barbs, from 17 mm. to 27 mm. 

 (f to lxV inch). The barbs of each arrow are unequal in size, and the surfaces 

 of the opposite barbs are fiat and not reversely concavo-convex as in African 

 poisoned arrows. 



The iron heads are provided with short and narrow basal prolongations which are 

 inserted into slits in the wooden shafts, where they are secured by pieces of common 

 twine or thin strips of vegetable fibre or metal wire, each of which is wound spirally 

 down the shaft for from 30 mm. to 60 mm., or rather less than the distance covered by 

 the poison (Plate XCIX, fig. l), and also serves to increase the adhesion of the poison to 

 the shaft. Each end of the encircling spiral is secured in a cut in the wooden shaft. 



The poison is greyish brown exteriorly, rather difficult to pulverise until dried 

 in vacuo over sulphuric acid, and when pulverised it has a brown or greenish-brown 

 colour. It is irregularly smeared over the greater part of both sides of the iron heads 

 and round the adjoining wooden shafts for from 40 mm. (if -inch) to 76 mm. 

 (3 inches) of their length, and it is marked with spiral lines or cracks representing the 

 underlying string or wire. The shafts are here thickened according to the quantity 



* They were submitted to Mr J. S. Gamble, C.S.I., a leading authority on Indian bamboos and other woods, and 

 he considers that the bamboo is probably a botanically undescribed species. 



