THE EVOLUTION OF THE ARROW 
37 
thorn points, passed through an age in which stone arrow- 
heads were used, and eventually passed into an iron age : 
this variation in development depended to a great extent 
on the absence or presence of suitable stone for making the 
arrow-points. The wooden point still survives, but only 
rarely, the stone point has died, but the leaf-shaped iron 
point used by some Kavirondo, Nandi, and also found among 
the Tharaka, is undoubtedly a copy in iron of the leaf-shaped 
stone arrow-head, of which good examples are now coming 
to light. Of course, these are only copies of the later and 
more perfect examples of the art of working in stone and with 
which the newer iron implements were for many years cq)lateral 
in point of time. No barbed stone implement has as yet been 
found in East Africa, but it is yet early to say that in this 
Arrow-head of Iron probably a copy of a Stone Head. 
Tharaka (Tana Valley), 
country the stone-barbed arrow-point did not suggest the iron 
one as in other countries. When the iron arrow-point became 
the vogue it was speedily discovered that a tang could be 
forged on to it, the tang being designed as a means of securing 
it to the shaft or to a wooden detachable point. In most 
East African arrows the tang is let into a small shaft of wood 
which is wedged into the main shaft of the arrow, and the 
small wooden shaft usually contains the clan-mark of the 
owner, and the iron head has stamped upon it the personal 
mark of the owner ; and in a hunter tribe this is most essential, 
for if an elephant is wounded it is very necessary to be able to 
prove whose arrow was the cause of death in order to establish 
a claim to the tusks, to say nothing of the carcass. Among 
most of the hunting tribes the poison is smeared over the 
wooden shaft of the detachable point and the whole of this 
portion of the arrow is carefully wrapped with a thin strip 
of skin which has a double object, viz. to protect the owner 
