/^r. Harrison. 79 



contrasts favourably with the slaughterhouse details 

 chronicled with revolting minuteness in some recent 

 accounts of elephant shooting in South Africa. The 

 practice in Ceylon is to aim invariably at the head, and 

 the sportsman finds his safety to consist in boldly facing 

 the animal, advancing to within fifteen paces, and lodging 

 a bullet, either in the temple or in the hollow over the 

 eye, or in a well-known spot immediately above the 

 trunk, where the weaker structure of the skull affords 

 an easy access to the brain. 1 The region of the ear is 

 also a fatal spot, and often resorted to, — the places I have 

 mentioned in the front of the head being only accessible 

 when the animal is " charging." Professor Harrison, in 

 his communication to the Royal Irish Academy on the 

 Anatomy of the Elephant, has rendered an intelligible 

 explanation of this in the following passage descriptive 

 of the cranium : — " It exhibits two remarkable facts : 

 first, the small space occupied by the brain; and, 

 seco?idly, the beautiful and curious structure of the bones 

 of the head. The two tables of all these bones, except 

 the occipital, arc separated by rows of large cells, some 

 from four to five inches in length, others only small, 

 irregular, and honey-comb-like : — these all communicate 

 Avith each other, and, through the frontal sinuses, with 



' The vulnerability of the elephant ing the comparative facility of access 



in this region of the head was known to the brain afforded at this spot, an 



to the ancients, and Pliny, describing ordinary leaden bullet is not certain 



a combat of elephants in the amphi- to penetrate, and frequently becomes 



theatre at Rome, says, that one was flattened. The hunters, to counteract 



slain by a single blow, " pilum sub this, are accustomed to harden the ball, 



oculo adactum, in vitalia capitis vene- by the introduction of a small portion 



rat." (Lib. viii. c. 7.) Notwithstand- of type-metal along with the lead. 



