Projectile - Throwing Engines of the Ancients. By Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, Bart.
(Longman and Co. Is. net.)—Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey is an authority on these subjects, all the more trustworthy because he puts his conclusions to the test of actual experience. He describes the catapult (with or without a sling) and the ballista of the ancients, and reinforces his conclusions by constructing models of his- own. These enable him to verify the statements as to the projectile powers of the classical machines. He has not, it is true, attained the distances attributed to the ancient machines, but then he has not constructed them on the same scale. Nor could it be expected that an amateur should manufacture articles equal to those produced by a long- established industry. He also describes a mediaeval contrivance known as the Tribuchet Von something of the same principle as that followed in the ballista). A Trebuchet could throw a horse over the walls of a town ! Then we have a chapter on Turkish and other Eastern bows, the Turkish being the most effective, though it was the smallest (only three feet two inches to three feet ten inches when strung, and weighing only twelve and a half ounces). The arrow was between twenty-five and twenty-six inches, and weighed about half-an-ounce. This arrow was sent as far as six hundred or eight hundred yards ; in 1795 a distance of four hundred and eighty yards was reached by Mahmoud Effendi, secretary to the Turkish Ambassador in London. He used a smaller and less powerful bow than those to which the greater flight is attributed. Sir R. Payne-Gallwey has attained three hundred and eighty yards (far beyond anything that can be accomplished by the long- bow). No one can draw one of the old Turkish bows. Great strength and a knack of combining leg and arm power were required.
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