Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/868

ARCHER. (1890). Since 1893 he has published a year- book of dramatic criticisms, made up of his contributions to the World, usually under the title, The Theatrical World. Archer has gained wide recognition for his translations of Ibsen's dramas and his attempts to popularize them on the English stage. His translation of The Doll's Bouse was performed at the Novelty Theatre, London, June 7, 1889, and in 1890-91 appeared Ibsen's Prose Dramas, in five volimies. He also translated from the Norwegian Kiel- land's beautiful Tales of Two Countries (1891), and from the Danish a large part of Georg Brandes's iri7/ia»)! Shakespeare (1898). He visited the United States in 1899 to study the dramatic situation here. His America To-day appeared in 1900. ARCH'ER-FISH. Any of the small spiny- rayed East Indian fishes of the family To.xo- tidie. They are said to eject from their mouths drops of water aimed at insects. These, when the aim is good, fall to the water and are seized as prey by the fish. Specifically, the name is applied to Toxotes jaeulator, which, because of this interesting habit, is often kept in house aquaria in the East.  ARCH'ERY (O. F. areherie, from Low Lat. arcarius, bowman, from Lat. arctis, bow). The use of the bow and arrow is still practiced by enthusiasts as a means for the capture and destruction of game; but its main use to-day, e.xcept in a few remote nations, is as a recrea- tion and healthful exercise. The use of the bow and arrow is coeval with man's authentic history; thus Ishniael "dwelt in the wilderness of Paran and became an archer" (Gen. xxi. 20). The archery of Jonathan is specifically referred to in Holy Writ, and .Josephus, the .Jewish historian, alleges that the bow was con- sidered the most efficient weapon of the Jews. It was deadly in the hands of their conquerors, the Babylonians, who have left many sculptured memorials of their prowess with it. It is not surprising, therefore, to fiiid that their near neighbors, the Persians, cultivated its practice, or that the vScythians carried the lesson of its value to the Greeks, from whom it passed, with the empire of the world, to the Romans. These, in their turn, were vanquished by the superior skill of the archers of the Goths, Huns, and Vandals.

Both as a weapon of the chase and for military purposes, the how was for centuries most formidable in the hands of the English. With the long-bow they decided the fate of nations, a? at Crcoy (l.'54fl) and Poitiers (l^i'M) and Agincourt (1415). The skill of their hunters and the wonderful feats of their arcliers have come • down to us from many sources. Especially are the ballads rich in incidents of their prowess. One old black-letter ballad, reprinted in Percy's lleliques, tells of "Three Archers," one of whom, shooting before the King, si)lit a wand in two at a distance of four hundred yards: and then, not satisfied with this example, tied his eldest son, a lad of seven years of age, to a stake one hundred and twenty yards off, and cleft an apple placed on his head.

In a treatise on martial discipline, by Ralph Smithe, written in the time of Elizabetli, we have a picture of the English archer: "Captens and officers should be skillful of that most noble weapon the long-bow; and to see that their soldiers, according to their draught and strength, have good bowes. well nocked, well strynged, everie strynge-wliippe in their nocke, and in the niiddes rubbed with wax braser, and shutting- glove, soniQ spare strynges trymed as aforesaid; every man one shefe of arrows, with a case of leather defensible against the rayne, and in the same four-and-twenty arrowes, whereof eight of them should be lighter than the residue, to gall or astoyne the eneniye with the hailshot of light arrowes before they shall come within the danger of their harquebus shot. Let every man have a l)rigandine or a little coat of plate, a skull or huflcyn, a maule of leade of five foote in lengthe, and a jiike, and the same hanging by liis girdle with a hook and a dagger."

In (^ueen Elizabeth's reign the practice of archery ceased to be a national necessity; yet she was able to ofl'er Charles IX. of France 0000 men, one-half of whom should be archers; and shortly before the beginning of her reign the celebrated scholar, Roger Ascham, who was a lover of all kinds of sport, wrote the classic work on archery, Toxophilus, or the Schole of Shoot- inij, in 1.145, in which he gave minute directions on attitude and the manner of drawing the bow. It is a very practical book; indeed, one i)oint he makes is worth transcribing even to-day. Young archers, he says, generally fall into the fault of fixing the eye on the end of the arrow rather than on the mark. To obviate this evil he ad- vises them to shoot in the dark by night at lights set up at their proper distances — a very shrewd bit of advice.

England had not a monopoly of skill in arch- ery: even in the Middle Ages the Egj-ptians, Arab3, and Turks ran them close. Baumgarten, indeed, relates that he saw 00,000 Mamelukes asseniljled in a spacious plain, who exhibited al- most incredible agility in shooting on horse- back, shooting arrows while in full career, and mounting and remounting on either side of their horses and shooting time and again, yet seldom or never missing their mark. He even asserts that horsemen shot while guiding two horses, one under either foot, as men ride in a circus, and their arrows found their mark.

So universal, indeed, was the skill in arch- ery before the advent of gunpowder that no coimtry has been discovered in which it was not the chief reliance of the natives in the chase and war. Vasco da Gama found it in the East Indies and Columbus in the West. The Amazons of South America opposed the invading Span- iards with it. It was found by Cabral in Brazil, and in the uttermost solitudes of the Arctic regions it was in use among the Eskimos. Even to-day the pigmy Bosjemen, in the far in- terior of .Africa, bring the mightiest of game to earth with their poison-tipped arrows: a very ancient and widespread practice to which Justin bears witness in the time of Alexander, and Pliny among the Gauls, as well as Vergil and numerous other classical chroniclers.

But the introduction of gunpowder gradually put an end to the vise of the bow and arrow, notwithstanding valiant efforts to maintain the ancient traditions. The Rolls of Parliament are full of indications of the gradual falling off of the voluntary practice of archery at the town butts. It was almost unheard of until it came into new life in London in the year 1700 as an exercise conducive to the improvement of health,