40 
THE EVOLUTION OF THE AEEOW 
in the arrow. One cannot help suspecting that these people, 
like the Congo pygmies, first used leaves for the purpose, but 
eventually, as they gradually ventured farther afield, away 
from the forest into the more arid plains, they found that the 
leaves dried and crumbled to dust : and what more natural 
than to replace them by strips of skin from their quarry ? 
Arrow with Leather Strip instead op Feathers* Miveruv 
The next stage is the use of a bird’s feather, which is almost 
universal in its range. The most primitive form seen is in the 
east portion of the Kavirondo, and these arrows are frequently 
seen with two or three whole feathers bound on to the base of 
the shaft. By ‘ whole ’ it is meant that both sides of the 
feather are used and it is not split longitudinally as we are 
accustomed to see, and it shows us that the mind of savage 
men rarely progresses by jumps but works on laboriously 
Kavirondo Arrows feathered with whole Feathers, 
through successive stages before it reaches a final stage of 
efficient design. 
The next stage is, of course, the one in which a feather is 
split longitudinally and a portion of it is cemented or tied on 
to the arrow. First we have two pieces of feather used, and 
later on it was discovered that three feathers were better. When 
one considers it, the transition from the leaf to the feather is 
not so great because both have a midrib, and in many leaves of 
monocotyledonous plants the veins of the leaf remind one of 
