That the smiths were in early times preeminently weapon makers is shown by certain passages in the bible. "Now there were no smiths found throughout all the land of Israel (for the Philistine said lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears); so it came to pass that in the day of battle there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people that were with Saul and Jonathan." "And he carried away all Jerusalem and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valor, even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths." "And all the men of might even seven thousand, and craftsmen and smiths a thousand, all that were strong and apt for war, even them the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon.”

I came across an interesting proof of this in Nachtigal's "Sahara und Sudan." As a locksmith among us will hang out a great gilded key as a sign of his trade, so in Bornu the smiths set up in front of their workshop a row of spears. They may point back to the time when weapons were the only articles made, or they may be on exhibition as showing the skill of the workman, who selects the spears as being the best examples of his skill.

In course of time specialization sets in in this field also. The workman no longer makes all kinds of weapons, but confines himself to one that he may the better perfect himself in that. In Central Africa there are villages of smiths which make nothing but throwing knives. This is also true among the Teda or Tubu. The Romans had great factories for the manufacture of their weapons. They were generally situated in places where iron could be readily obtained. Each city was renowned for some particular weapon. Concordia was famous for its arrowsmiths (sagitarii), Verona for its helmet makers (loricarii), Ticinum for its bow makers (arcuarii), Luca for its sword makers (spatharii). They had crafts from which no one could leave, and the son must follow the trade of his father. During the Middle Ages there were crafts for almost every possible branch of the trade, and in some cities they held the control of the municipal government.

With the appearance of the armed knight in Europe in the Middle Ages the working of suits of armor reached a point

of perfection that far surpassed any previous attempts, and has never been equalled since. No other specimens of iron work from this period will bear the slightest comparison to these suits of mail. The fame of scores of these masters in the art of armor-making has come down to the present day, and is linked with that of famous artists and sculptors who were their personal friends and associates. Meyer says, "Artists of the first rank like Durer, Holbein, Miehlich and Aldegrever did not disdain to furnish armor and sword makers with sketches and plans for their decorations." Some of the greatest sculptors in Florence in the time of its glory worked on armor. Ring or link armor was a trade by itself and was carried to such a height that a shirt of mail could be make into a ball that could be carried in the two hands. It would puzzle the best workmen of to-day to fit a person to a steel suit so that it should sit closely, and at the same time allow freedom of movement to the limbs. But it was on the decoration of the flat and raised surfaces that these old masters chiefly prided themselves. The breastplates were engraved, etched and colored. They had a process by which they gave a beautiful drab color to the polished steel, which has been lost and never recovered. Empaistic work was known in Europe in the classical period, but lost during the dark ages. In the 14th century the Indians and Arabs were found carrying it on, and it was brought back to Europe. In Toledo and Florence it reached its greatest height. The only instances of raised empaistic work come from Spain and are on breast-plates and shields. It is impossible in an article of this length to go into the question of the technique of the medieval armor, and there is a comprehensive literature on the subject easily accessible. I will add a couple of sentences from Meyer's "Handbuch der Schmiedkunst": "These suits of armor belong to the most interesting pieces of technical skill which have ever been seen in iron, or one might truly say anywhere in the realm of decorative art. One is astonished at the tasteful and accurate workmanship which ornamentation gained by means of their technical processes."

Another field for the exercise of the inventive faculties was along the line of engines of war. The problem here was the

direction of the greatest possible energy upon a given point. The greatest mathematicians of the classical epoch turned their attention to this, and a few of their works have come down to us. These military engines are the most stupendous pieces of mechanism of which we have any record. They are in fact almost the only instances of complicated machinery, the description of which they have handed down. Thus we see that along this line of invention war took the lead. There were three principal classes of these engines used in the siege of walled cities: (1) ballista, worked on the principle of a great cross bow and hurling the missles in a horizontal direction; (2) catapult, gaining its power from twisted ropes or leathern thongs and hurling like our mortars; (3) tormentum, getting its projectile force on the same principle as the catapult, but so modified as to project horizontally like the ballista. Some idea of the power of these machines can be had when we know that they sometimes used the catapult to throw dead horses over the lofty walls of a city to breed pestilence within.

Wherever there are two different materials employed for weapons and implements, the one of later discovery is always used for the weapons. Where but one is used, then the best is saved for the arms or is put through some additional process for hardening or purification which is not resorted to for the common implements of every-day use. When a people is on the stone age the finest pieces of flint are saved for the spear points and battle axes. Where stone and bronze are found together the weapons are made from bronze and the skin scrapers, etc., from stone. The same is true of iron and stone, or of iron and bronze. In the latter case the weapons are generally of iron and the ornaments of bronze or brass. This can be shown by the fact that ferrum in Latin and oldnpos in Greek mean sword, while in English the favorite word among the poets is a "steel." Beck says, "Since iron and steel were used at first only for the richest weapons and vessels, we can conceive that it was dearer than copper or brass." "The iron relic of which the antiquity is the best assured is a kind of scimeter with curved blade, which Belzoni discovered under one of the Sphinxes of Karnak. This weapon, which is oxy

dated throughout and broken, bears absolute traces of authenticity and should be attributed to the early Pharaonic epoch." (Chabas.) No such careful preparation and working has been ever given to iron as by the Indians of the Hymalaya, the Japanese, and the makers of the celebrated Damascus blades. All the iron used was buried and allowed to be nearly consumed by rust. What remained was wrought and rewrought until the desired tenacity and elasticity was obtained. Some of the finest damascening I have ever seen was on sword blades made in Japan in the 15th century. I never heard of iron being treated in this way for purposes of industry. In making breast plates in the Middle Ages a special process for hardening the iron was gone through in Milan. In 1480, since the practice seemed to be dying out, Maximilian I. set about diligently to perpetuate the process and transfer it to other uses, and is said to have succeeded.

So far as is known to us, Gruson was the first in Germany to perceive the high importance which chilled cast iron might win in industrial operations if greater strength could be given At least he seems to have been the first who performed extensive methodical experiments in order to improve the material, not only as regards its hardness but also its strength. The first use his discoveries were put to was to make shells and armor for the government. Later the process was used

for industrial purposes.

Chilled steel was first used for armor and was thought to be of use for little else. It is probable that to-day one-half of the plows of this country are made from it. The latest development in this line is the Harveyized steel plate. I was wondering how long before this process would be put to some other use than for making armor. A few days ago I was looking over a bicycle catalogue in which the manufacturers were setting forth the remarkable merits of their highest-priced wheel, and found that one recommendation was that all the balls used in the bearings had been through this process, which originated in the needs of war.

Stones suitable for making weapons were probably among the first articles of any considerable commerce. In a low stage

of civilization we find kinds of stones that must have come from

a very great distance. There are weapons of nephrite in Europe, which must have come at least as far as from Asiatic Turkey, since that is the nearest known deposit of it to-day. This was but a natural course, for a tribe is not long in seeing that if its weapons are inferior to its neighbor's it must lose in the fight. When metal is worked, then that becomes almost invaluable for a tribe. Schweinfurth found the people of inner Africa acquainted with the use of iron. The Djur made spear points which passed as articles of commerce and a measure of value among all the neighboring tribes. The negroes in Central Africa make a kind of armor by sewing iron rings upon a leather shirt, or fastening them to their shield. When they need to purchase anything they take off a few and find no trouble in disposing of them.

War probably fosters the spirit of protection, and leaves more strongly marked the boundaries between different nations. The feudal manor was a splendid case of militancy carried to the extreme. Each one was a self-sufficing unit. But war has helped industry when it worked along a different line. It was war that, by combining and conquering, first formed large social groups which paved the way for differentiation of structure and division of labor. For without a large society there would be no great demand for any one article, and without a considerable demand there would be no division of labor given solely to its production with the gain resulting from specialization and differentiation. The Roman Empire was an instance of the point.

We know that war has had a great influence upon architecture. John Rae says upon this point, "The art was probably at first applied in modern Europe, to the construction of places of strength. Solidity to resist the battering engines, height to prevent the fortress being scaled, and the advantage of having scope to annoy the besiegers, produced the massive battlemented towers and castles of the ancient barons. As its materials were the most durable, principles to which we have already adverted soon led to its application to structures devoted to the purposes of religion." But its influence did not