Game Animals of India, etc. 



ears and broad forehead present an immense frontage ; 

 the head is held high, with the trunk curled between 

 the tusks, to be uncoiled in the moment of attack ; 

 the massive fore-legs come down with the force and 

 regularity of ponderous machinery ; and the whole 

 figure is rapidly foreshortened, and appears to double 

 in size with each advancing stride. The trunk being 

 curled and unable to emit any sound, the attack is made 

 in silence, after the usual premonitory shriek," 



With modern weapons of precision and great pene- 

 trating power, and the accurate knowledge possessed of 

 the vital points of their anatomy by the majority of 

 sportsmen, elephants are now generally despatched 

 with comparative speed and certainty. Not so, how- 

 ever, in the old days, as the following account of an 

 old " rogue," whose skull is now in the British 

 Museum, sufficiently attests. This elephant, writes 

 Dr. Falconer, " was killed in the jungles on the banks 

 of the Ganges, at no great distance from Meerut, in 

 May 1833, by a party of five experienced sportsmen, 

 who went out for the express purpose of killing it. 

 The savage animal made no fewer than twenty-three 

 desperate and gallant charges against a battery of at least 

 sixteen double-barrelled guns, to which it was exposed 

 on each occasion, and fell, after several hours, with its 

 skull literally riddled with bullets. Besides the shot-holes 

 of its last engagement, the frontal plateau alone bears, 

 above the nasals, the healed canals of at least sixteen 

 bullet-holes received in previous encounters, exclusive of 

 those effaced by the confluent fissures of its latest wounds." 



The battered skull shows that not a single bullet had 

 penetrated the comparatively small brain -chamber ; 

 all having traversed merely the surrounding mass of 

 honeycomb-like bone, where they could do little damage. 

 To reach the vital brain-cavity, the sportsman selects 

 one of three shots. In the case of the front shot, the 

 point at which to aim varies according to the position 

 of the elephant at the moment of pulling the trigger. 



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