As a material for shields, the hides of animals were employed even more universally, and up to a later stage of civilization. In North America the majority of the wild tribes use shields of the thickest parts of the hides of the buffalo.[51] In the New Hebrides the skin of the alligator is used for this purpose, as appears by a specimen belonging to the Institution. In Africa the Fans of the Gaboon employ the hide of the elephant for their large, rectangular shields.[52] The Wadi, the Wagogo, and the Abyssinians in East Africa, have shields of buffalo’s hide, or some kind of leather, like the Ethiopians of the time of Herodotus. The ox-hide shields of the Greeks are mentioned in Homer’s Iliad; that of Ajax was composed of seven hides with a coating of brass on the outside. The spear of Hector is described as piercing six of the hides and the brass coating, remaining fixed in the seventh hide.[53] The Kaffirs, Bechuanas, Basutos, and others in South Africa, use the hide of the ox.[54] The Kelgeres, Kelowi, and Tawarek, of Central Africa, employ the hide of the Leucoryx antelope.[55] Shields of the rhinoceros hide, from Nubia, and of the ox, from Fernando Po, are exhibited. In Asia the Biluchi carry shields of the rhinoceros horn, and the same material is also used in East Africa. A specimen from Zanzibar is in the Institution. In the greater part of India the shields are made of rhinoceros and buffalo’s hide, boiled in oil, until they sometimes become transparent, and are proof against the edge of a sabre.[56]
In a higher state of civilization, as the facilities for constructing shields of improved materials increased, the skins of animals were still used to cover the outside. Thus the negroes of the Gold Coast made their shields of osier covered with leather.[57] That of the Kanembu of Central Africa is of wood covered with leather,[58] and very much resembles in form that of the Egyptians, which, as we learn from Meyrick and others, was also covered with leather, having the hair on the outside like the shields of the Greeks.[59] The Roman ‘scutum’ was of wood covered with linen and sheepskin. According to the author of Horae Ferales, the Saxon shield was of wood covered with leather; the same applies to the Scotch target, and leather was used as a covering for shields as late as the time of Henry VIII.
Head Crests. The origin of the hairy crests of our helmets is clearly traceable to the custom of wearing for head-dresses the heads and hair of animals. The Asiatic Ethiopians used as a head-covering, the skin of a horse’s head, stripped from the carcase together with the ears and mane, and so contrived, that the mane served for a crest, while the ears appeared erect upon the head (Hdt. vii. 70). In the coins representing Hercules, he appears wearing a lion’s skin upon the head. These skins were worn in such a manner that the teeth appeared grinning at the enemy over the head of the wearer (as represented in Plate VIII, fig. 29, which is taken from a bronze in the Blacas collection), a custom which seems also to have prevailed in Mexico.[60] Similar head-dresses are worn by the soldiers on Trajan’s Column. The horns worn on the heads of some of the North American Indians (Fig. 30), and in some parts of Africa[61], are no doubt derived from this practice of wearing on the head the skins of animals with their appendages. The helmet of Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, was surmounted by two goat’s horns. Horns were afterwards represented in brass, on the helmets of the Thracians (Fig. 31), the Belgic Gauls, and others. Fig. 32 is an ancient British helmet of bronze lately found in the Thames, surmounted by straight horns of the same material.[62] Horned helmets are figured on the ancient vases. Fig. 33 is a Greek helmet having horns of brass, and traces of the same custom may still be observed in heraldry.[63]
The practice of wearing head-dresses of feathers, to distinguish the chiefs from the rank and file, is universal in all parts of the world, and in nearly every stage of civilization. Amongst the North American Indians the feathers are cut in a particular manner to denote the rank of the wearer, precisely in the same manner that the long feathers of our general officers distinguish them from those wearing shorter feathers in subordinate ranks. This custom, Mr. Schoolcraft observes, when describing the head-dresses of the American Indians, may very probably be derived from the feathered creation, in which the males, in most of the cock, turkey, and pheasant tribes, are crowned with bright crests and ornaments of feathers.[64]
Solid Plates. It has often struck me as remarkable that the shells of the tortoise and turtle, which are so widely distributed and so easily captured, and which would appear to furnish shields ready made to the hand of man, should seldom, if ever, in so far as I have been able to learn, be used by savages for that purpose. This may, however, be accounted for by the fact that broad shields of that particular form, though common in more advanced civilizations, are never found in the hands of savages, at least in those localities in which the turtle, or large tortoise, is available.
It will be seen subsequently, in tracing the history of the shield, that in the rudest condition of savage life, this weapon of defence has a history of its own; that both in Africa and Australia it is derived by successive stages from the stick or club, and that the broad shield does not appear to have been developed until after mankind had acquired sufficient constructive skill to have been able to form shields of lighter and more suitable materials than is afforded by the shell of the turtle. It is, however, evident that in later times the analogy was not lost sight of, as the word ‘testudo’ is a name given by the Romans to several engines of war having shields attached to them, and especially to that particular formation of the legionary troops, in which they approached a fortified building with their shields joined together, and overlapping, like the scaly shell of the imbricated turtle, which is a native of the Mediterranean and Asiatic seas.
Jointed Plates. In speaking of the jointed plates, so common to all the crustacea, it is sufficient to notice that this class of defence in the animal kingdom, may be regarded as the prototype of that peculiar form of armour which was used by the Romans, and to which the French, at the commencement of the seventeenth century, gave the name of ‘écrevisse’, from its resemblance to the shell of a lobster. The fluted armour, common in Persia, and in the middle ages of Europe, is also constructed in exact imitation of the corrugated shell defences of a large class of the Mollusca.
Scale Armour. That scale armour derived its origin from the scales of animals, there can be little doubt. It has been stated on the authority of Arrian (Tact. 13. 14), that the Greeks distinguished scale armour by the term λεπιδωτός, expressive of its resemblance to the scales of fish; whilst the jointed armour, composed of long flexible bands, like the armour of the Roman soldier, and the ‘écrevisse’ of the middle ages, was called φολιδωτός from its resemblance to the scales of serpents. The brute origin of scale armour is well illustrated by the breastplate of the Bugo Dyaks, a specimen of which, from the Museum of the Institution, is represented in Plate IX, fig. 34. The process of its construction was described in a notice attached to a specimen of this armour in the Exhibition of 1862. The scales of the Pangolin are collected by the Bugis as they are thrown off by the animal, and are stitched on to bark with small threads of cane, so as to overlap each other in the same manner that they are arranged on the skin of the animal. When the front piece is completely covered with scales, a hole is cut in the bark for the head of the wearer. The specimen now exhibited appears, however, to be composed of the entire skin of the animal. Captain Grant, in his Walk across Africa, mentions that the scales of the armadillo are in like manner collected by the negroes of East Africa, and worn in a belt ‘three inches across’, as a charm.[65]
It is reasonable to suppose that the use of scale armour, in most countries, originated in this manner by sewing on to the quilted armour before described, fragments of any hard material calculated to give it additional strength. Plate VIII, fig. 35, is a piece of bark from Tahiti, studded with pieces of coco-nut stitched on. The Sarmatians and Quadi are described by Ammianus Marcellinus as being protected by a ‘lorica’, composed of pieces of horn, planed and polished, and fastened like feathers upon a linen shirt.[66] Pausanias also, who is confirmed by Tacitus, says that the Sarmatians had large herds of horses, that they collected the hoofs, and after preparing them for the purpose, sewed them together, with the nerves and sinews of the same animal, so as to overlap each other like the surface of a fir cone, and he adds, that the ‘lorica’ thus formed was not inferior to that of the Greeks either in strength or elegance. The Emperor Domitian had, after this model, a cuirass of boar’s hoofs stitched together.[67] Fig. 36 represents a fragment of scale armour made of horn, found at Pompeii. A very similar piece of armour (Fig. 37), from some part of Asia, said to be from Japan, but the actual locality of which is not known, is figured in Meyrick’s Ancient Armour, pl. iii. 1. It is made of the hoofs of some animal, stitched and fastened so as to hold together without the aid of a linen corselet. An ancient stone figure[68] (Plate IX, fig. 38), having an inscription in a character cognate to the Greek, but in an unknown language, and covered with armour of this description, is represented in the third volume of the Journal of the Archaeological Association. The Kayans, inhabiting the eastern coast of Borneo, form a kind of armour composed of little shells placed one overlapping the other, like scales, and having a large mother-of-pearl shell at the end. This last portion of the armour is shown in the figure of the Kayan war-dress already referred to (Plate VII, fig. 13). Plate VIII, fig. 39, is a back- and breast-piece of armour from the Sandwich Islands, composed of seals’ teeth, set like scales, and united with string.
Similar scales would afterwards be constructed in bronze and iron. It was thus employed by the Egyptians (Plate IX, fig. 40), two scales of which are shown in Fig. 41; also by the Persians, Assyrians, Philistines, Dacians, and most ancient nations.