ARMS. If the subject of this article require any definition, it may be comprised under, " implements to injure by aggression, or to aid the human strength in repelling a foe." It is truly deplorable in contemplating the history of nations, to behold the methods of destruction that have been devised. Their number, power, and variety, are such, that we might safely declare, that nothing has so much occupied the invention and ingenuity of men, as contrivances for the destruction of their own species.
We can readily conceive, that the first implements of aggression or defence used by a savage people, were stones, blocks of wood, and other substances hound in a natural state. But as a perfect parity would subsist, in this respect, between two contending foes, the minds of both would, in the earliest stages, be engaged in plan ning the means of superiority. Nor is it ideal, that na tural substances were employed in conflicts : recent in stances have fatally proved the fact. M. Laugh:, the French astronomer, tell during an attack by the natives of Navigator's Islands with stones ; and one of Captain Bligh's men was killed in the same manner by the na tives of Tofoa. The signal of attack is knocking the stones together, and then they are thrown with surpris ing violence.
Next to stones, the lance, club, and sling, are used by the most barbarous nations of modern times. The lance, which is to be considered as synonymous with the spear, javelin, assagay, and in later times the pike, is from five to eighteen feet in length. It is made of strong tena cious wood, generally pointed with bone, shell, or iron. The savages of the Admiralty Islands carry a spear five or six feet long ; those of Duke of York's Island one of ten feet long, framed of ebony, or some other hard wood, or made of bamboo, in which case a harder wood is used for the point. The natives of the Pelew Islands have them commonly twelve feet long, made of bamboo, and pointed with a very hard wood, transversely barb ed; and they have also another kind eighteen feet in length. Herodotus says, the spears of the AIassagetx and Scythians were of brass. Modern savages display
great address in throwing their spears, and striking dis tant objects with much precision. The spears of the Pelew islands are missible 50 or 60 feet ; but the na tives of Caffraria throw their assagays, and the savages of Botany Bay their lances, to the distance of 70 mea sured yards. These weapons are either projectile, or always retained. The Saxons and Normans used long spears, which were never thrown, either by the horse or foot, in an engagement. The ancient cavalry, in charging, rested the but-end on the bow of the saddle, during the preNalence of chain mail ; and when plate armour supplanted it, on a bracket projecting from the cuirass. Older nations, the Greeks for example, threw their spears. The superiority obtained by the length of this weapon is evident : hence there was frequently a competition between neighbouring kingdoms, which should possess the longest. A Scottish statute, in 1471, enacts, that all spears shall be six ells in length, and made of one piece of wood, under pain of forfeiting them. This could not but be a formidable weapon in resisting cavalry ; accordingly, in a description of the army at the battle of Pinkie, in 1547, the spears in seve ral ranks resting against the right foot, and opposed breast-high to the enemy, and these crossed by other spears, are represented as forming an impenetrable bul wark. The Welsh fought nearly after the same man ner. Towards the latter part of the seventeenth centu ry, most of the European nations, by comrpon consent, fixed the length of the pike at 18 feet, though practice seldom admitted it of above 14 or 15. In 1680, a mili tary author describes it as made of strong ash, 14 or 15 feet long between the head and foot ; the head four inches long, two and a half broad at the b -oadest place, with long and strong iron bands, which were indispensi ble, to prevent the cavalry from cutting them off with their broad swords. An attempt has lately been made to revive the pike, but we arc not aware that it has been used in actual service by any of the European armies.