The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-12-13
STRANGE WEAPONS OF WAR
GROTESOUE MILITARY ENGINES
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES

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 Dragon for Attacking TOwns-An-
 cient Wer Carts-MOnster CannOns of
 Early Days-Odd Modern Inventions.
 The ingenuity of man has been taxed to the utmost to contriye new and more deadly means of killing and wounding his fellow men, and science has now brought our modern weapons to such perfection that it seems almost impos- sible to imagine any advance in their effectiveness. If we except the cold steel-Which still has it's uses, if we are to judge by the recent war in the East --there are but three classes of offen- sive weapons; the gun and it's proJec- tiles, the rifle and the mine or torpedo. In the process of our prehistoric ances- tors an enormous number of contriyan- ces have been invented by the fertile brains of soldiers, mechanics and scien- tiste.
 Some of these, such as the hand gonne," Edward HIS 'crackeys Of war"-the cannon he took against the Scots-and the engineer Giannibelli ''devil ships of Antwerp" may be re- garded, writes Leutenant-C Colonel C.. Field in the Scientific American, as be- ing the direct ancestors of the rifle, gun and torpedo of to-day. But there have been hosts of others, which have either become entirely obsolete after very short reign, have never caught on,' or fin very many cases, have never had any actual existence outside the plans and ideas of their sanguine inventors
 Many of these warlike appliances, es- pecially those belonging to the middle ages, are of the most grotesque deserip- tion. As at no distant date the making of hideous grimaces to strike terror into the heart of an enemy was cultivated as a branch of the military art by the troops of the Celestial empire, so in me diaeval times the grotesque seems to have been considered at least as much desideratum as the practical by the inventors of offensive and defensive weapons So we have such eXtraordi- nary contrivances as a machine to break the ranks of an enemy and oth- CT dragon-like edifices,
 How the former-which appears to be kind of mediaeval motor car-got over the ground and how it brought its formidable array of spikes to bear upon those who had the hardihood to oppose It's progress, must be left to the imagi- nation The other machine Is merely a grotesque edition of the movable tow CTS that played such an important part in the sieges of ancient and medieval cities.
 Ancient warriors had great pen chant for naming their various warlike engines and machines after animals, real or imaginary. Thus we have the Roman "musculus," or little mouse, a machine for undermining the walls of a besieged city; the battering ram, the SOW, the scorpion for discharging big arrows from a powerful bow, the ona- ger for hurlng stones. The onager, &C., cording to tradition, was an animal that had a pleasant trick of kicking stones with great violence at it's pur- Euers. Again, the Roman warships were equipped with a spiked gangway known as a "corvus," or "crow,' which on being let fall upon an enemy's shir grappled her and formed a bridge for boarders.
 Medieval soldiers made frequent use of the wolf in the defence of castles and towns This was a species of huge harrow, made of balks of timber with wooden spikes at the intersections which set up outside the walls, could be thrown down and forward to crush the besiegers as they crowded to the assault. When cannon were invented their names became legion. A ship or a train of artillery contained perfect geological garden of birds, beasts and fabulous annals. There were basilisks drakes, dragons volant, falcons, ser pents and pellcans, not to mention 'double dogs" and partridge mortars.
 We have of late years seen a good deal in the newspapers about the train ing of dogs for military purposes, such as scouting, giving notice of the ap- proach of an enemy and searching for thte wounded. In former days this in- telligent animal was also employed ir warfare, not only as watch dog. One method of letting slip the dogs of war" was to equip them with a pot oi blazing resin, a collar of spikes and 8 jacket of leather scales to protect theil backs from the fire, and send them among cavalry, much to the confusion of the horses.
 An Arab writer describes some won- ierful war dogs which belonged to the Grand Seignior, which he says were as big as donkeys, were clad in rich cloth silver collars and neck rings and a cir cle of iron points around the neck Some were even clad in armor. They were equal to tackling wolves, dragons In the fire, eagles in the air and croco- diles in the water, to say nothing of be- ing able to bring down man iron horseback, However stout fellow he may be-" Dogs equipped in much the same manner were also used for incen diary purposes to set villages on fire, a' were also cats and pigeone.
 With the advent of artillery and fire arms, all kinds of queer weapons were from time to time invented, Manw oi them distinctly foreshadowed our mod ern repeating and rifed weapons. Not a few revolvers, repeaters and rifed muskets were made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but as the whole affair had to be made by hant their cost precluded any general adop' ton of these ingenious devices. The earliest cannon were breech loaders and like our modern guns were built III