I have obtained with much difficulty during the last few years about a score of composite bows of Turkish manufacture from various parts of the Ottoman Empire. Not more than three or four of these have, however, proved serviceable, owing to their age, as no bows of the kind have been made for over a hundred years, the art of their construction being long since neglected and lost. [Page 121] With the bow depicted in Fig. 1, I shot six arrows in succession to ranges exceeding 350 yards, the longest flights being 360, 365 and 367 yards. This public record was established July 7th, 1905, at an archery meeting held at Le Touquet, near Etaples in France. The ground selected for the trial was perfectly level; there was no wind, and the distances were accurately measured by several well-known members of the Royal Toxophilite Society who were present. With the same bow I have, in private practice, thrice exceeded 415 yards, and on one occasion reached 421 yards. Though this bow is a powerful one for a modern archer to draw, it is a mere plaything compared with other Turkish bows of the same length, but of far greater strength, which I possess. Some of the latter are so curved in their unstrung state that their ends nearly meet, and are so stiff, when strung, that I cannot draw them to more than half the length of a 25½-in. arrow. Fig. 15 shows a bow of this kind in my collection. [Illustration: FIG. 15. SKETCH OF A VERY POWERFUL TURKISH BOW WITH ITS ARROW AND BOW-STRING.] Such bows as these require a pull of 150 to 160 lbs. to bend them to their full extent, which quite accounts for the marvellous, but well authenticated, distances attained in flight-shooting by the muscular Turkish bowmen of bygone days. Though 367 yards is a short range in comparison with that which the best Turkish archers were formerly capable of obtaining, it is, so far as known, much in excess of the distance any arrow has been shot from a bow since the oft-quoted feat of Mahmoud Effendi in 1795, p. 119. Full corroboration of the wonderful flight-shooting of the Turks may be found in some treatises on Ottoman archery which have been translated into German by Baron Hammer-Purgstall (Vienna, 1851). [Page 122] In his directions concerning the selection of suitable bows and arrows for the sport, one of the Turkish authors quoted by Purgstall writes: ‘The thinnest and longest flying arrow has white swan feathers shaped like leaves,[50] and this arrow, with a good shot, carries from 1,000 to 1,200 paces.’ [50] _Anglice_, Balloon feathers. The orthodox length of a pace is thirty inches, and thus even 1,000 paces, or the lesser range mentioned, would exceed 800 English yards.