| 1. | In the Badminton Library. Archery, C. J. LONGMAN, Esq., says (p. 76) "In discussing methods of drawing the bow occasion will frequently arise to refer to the pamphlet by PROF. MORSE, as he was the first to investigate the subject. His researches on a seemingly trivial matter have a high ethnographic interest, and his classification is so sound that it must form the basis of any further researches on the subject." |
| 2. | The English archer prefers the word "loose" to release. Release seems to me a better word for we release a prisoner; we speak of a loose button, a loose hinge, something that is still there, like a loose tooth. |
| 3. | HAROLD H. BENDER, Professor of Indo-Germanic Philology at Princeton University has lately published an extremely illuminating book, entitled "The Home of the Indo-European." He gives good reasons for believing that the term Indo-European is preferable to that of Aryan or Mediterranean. The term Caucasian of Blumenbach is, of course, nearly obsolete. |
| 4. | Reprinted from the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. |
| 5. | The sefin, or thumb-rings, before alluded to, are one of the distinctions of an Oriental archer. Englishmen, it is well known, draw the bowstring with their first three fingers; the Flemings, with the first and second only; but neither use the thumb at all. The Asiatic method is the reverse of this. There the bowman draws altogether with his thumb, the forefinger bent in its first and second joint, being merely pressed on one side of the arrow nock, to secure it from falling. In order to prevent the flesh from being torn by the bowstring, he wears a broad ring of agate, cornelian, green marble, ivory, horn, or iron, according to his rank and means. Upon the inside of this, which projects half an inch, the string rests when the bow is drawn; on the outside it is only half that breadth; and, in loosing the arrow, he straightens his thumb, which sets the string free. These rings, with a spare string, are usually carried in a small box, suspended at the bowman's side; but from habit, many retain them constantly upon the hand, for ornament as well as use.
Consistent with the splendour of their other appointments, the sefin worn by those dark-eyed houris, whose feats we have so recently been contemplating, are adorned with all the cunning of the jeweller's art. A stone called jadde, crystal, jasper, and even gold, inlaid with stones of varied hue, glitter in the sunbeams as each snowy hand strains up the silken bowstring. A quilted half sleeve of crimson velvet, or fine cloth, thickly embroidered with gold flowers, protects the arm from being bruised by the cord in its return. Did not a very curious relic, recently come to light, prove CHAUCER'S 'gai bracer' to be a purely English fashion, we might imagine he was describing one of these. The weight of the gold in one which I wore upon my arm for a short time was remarkable; it probably amounted to three or four ounces." Hansard Book of Archery, p. 136. In no other country in the world has the practice of archery survived as in England. The Royal Toxophilite Society of London and many other archery Societies in England were founded in the 17th and 18th centuries. England may claim the greatest number of books on archery. With this supremacy in the archery field it is strange to find so brief an article on the subject in the Encyclopedia Brittanica. The word archer's ring does not appear. Its meagre bibliography makes no mention of HANSARD'S classical book with its steel engravings. In some unaccountable way it records my "Ancient and Modern Methods of Arrow Release" Essex Institute Bulletin, Salem, Mass., 1885, as follows: Archery, Ancient and Modern, E. S. Morse, Worcester, Mass. 1792. |
