Ever since a hairy primitive first picked up a stone and threw it, man has tried to find better and better ways to strike from a safe distance. The devices which he has produced for this purpose have been many and varied, yet, strangely enough, remarkable similarities often occur between inventions of widely separated areas. In ancient Peruvian graves have been found cord slings for hurling stones almost identical with those used by herd boys in Palestine today, as in the time of David and Goliath. Bronze arrowheads from prehistoric Japan are much the same as those excavated from Roman Britain. The bow has several different characteristic forms distributed throughout the world, but its fundamental principle is everywhere the same. [Illustration: _Fig. 37 (Left). A light crossbow like this would be used by a young man or an athletic girl. Flemish, XV century._] [Illustration: _Fig. 38 (Below). Made a little lighter. A prodd or bullet-shooting crossbow, probably for a lady._] The first projectile-throwing arm appropriate to an art museum is the crossbow, which is simply a bow mounted on a wooden stock provided with a catch and trigger, so that the bow could be carried ready to shoot. This was a great convenience in hunting or war, because otherwise the time lost in drawing the bow might give the victim opportunity to escape. Moreover, it was soon found that the application of mechanical devices permitted the use of a bow much stronger than any man could draw unaided. [Illustration: _Fig. 39. It took a powerful man to wind and shoot this heavy Swiss hunting crossbow, even with the cranequin to help wind!_] [Illustration: _Fig. 40. If you take off the outer case, these three parts make up the entire mechanism of the cranequin._] [Illustration: _Fig. 41. Mechanism of a crossbow lock, complicated but effective._] Fig. 37 shows a light Flemish crossbow of the fifteenth century. Its wooden stock is inlaid with white and with green stained bone in openwork patterns. This type of crossbow required mechanical assistance to pull the string back to the catch which would hold it until the moment should arrive to shoot; the instrument employed was called a _goat’s foot_ lever. The crossbow of Fig. 38 is Italian work of the sixteenth century. The bow is light enough to be pulled by the hands alone, without mechanical assistance. It had a double string, with a little pouch attached between the two strands, and shot small bullets, instead of arrows. The wooden stock is beautifully carved and the metal parts are damascened with arabesques in gold. This type of light crossbow was especially popular with aristocratic ladies who are frequently represented shooting it in hunting tapestries of the period.