Like many things British, the development of the units of Scouts into the Frontier Corps was organic, unplanned and initially unsystematic. It began, in the British manner, as an improvisation to meet a need; it was maintained because it guaranteed certain unique skills at an acceptable price (the great Empire may have vaunted its 'pomp and circumstance' to wow the impressionable, but behind the scenes the deciding factor was often simply the acceptability or otherwise to HM Treasury) and only then was the principle regularised, standardised and systemised (cf. the development of the Frontier Force, from irregulars to a corps d'elite).