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Let us take as an instance two of the most widespread of weapons. The blow-pipe’s progressive form has been independently developed upon a similar plan, with distinctly marked steps, in places the most remote.[42] Another instance is the chevaux-de-frise, the spikes of metal familiar to the classics.[43] They survive in the caltrops or bamboo splints planted in the ground by the barefooted Mpangwe (Fans) of Gaboon-land and by the Rangos of Malacca.

In the early days of anthropological study we read complaints that ‘it is impossible to establish, amongst the implements of modern savages, a perfectly true sequence,’ although truth may be arrived at in points of detail; and that ‘in regard to the primary order of development, much must still be left open to conjecture.’ But longer labour and larger collections have lately added many a link to the broken chain of continuity. We can now trace with reasonable certainty the tardy progress of evolution which, during a long succession of ages, led to the systematised art of war. The conditions of the latter presently allowed society periods of rest, or rather of recovery; and more leisure for the practice which, in weapons as in other things, ‘maketh perfect.’[44] And man has no idea of finality: he will stop short of nothing less than the absolutely perfect. He will labour at the ironclad as he did the canoe; at the fish-torpedo as he did the petard.[45]