Note 307 — Chapter VII

The prototype of the true composite bow, characterised by the addition to it of a mass of moistened sinews which, on drying, make the bow curve up, must have had another form; it bore a resemblance probably to the bow of the Indian tribes of the north-west of America and of California, in which the sinew covering often goes beyond the body of the bow and hangs down at its two extremities.

The improved forms of the composite bow are only found on the Asiatic continent. The so-called “Tatar” or Mongolian bow, the Chinese “kung,” is chiefly composed of a piece of wood to which is fixed with bird-lime on the inner side a piece of horn, and on the outer side two layers of sinews covered with two layers of birch-bark. All other composite bows, Persian, Hindu, etc., are only complicated forms of this type, to which we may also refer the exceptional types of bow of the Lapp and Javanese, etc.

Accepting the view of General Pitt Rivers, loc. cit., we may say that the composite bow is not a more perfect weapon than the simple bow, and that it could only have had its origin in countries where the absence of very elastic varieties of wood make it necessary to seek in the superposition of various materials the elasticity required to augment the force of the weapon.