204 MY SOMALI BOOK 



reasons I think that if the young sportsman, who does 

 not wish to cause unnecessar}^ suffering, were to give 

 a thought to his average of cartridges expended for 

 each head of game killed (not hit) with the rifle, he 

 might realise that perhaps he is, after all, in the habit 

 of firing too many shots at animals which ought to be 

 considered out of range. 



But he must beware of making a fetish of his 

 average, or of looking upon it as in itself a criterion of 

 his shooting abilities. If he once begins to hesitate 

 about taking a shot for fear of spoiling his average, he 

 may attain his object — in figures — but he will not get 

 the best heads, and he will never be a shikari. 



There is another man one may occasionally meet 

 who will excuse his indifference as to the fate of a 

 wounded animal by expressing his belief that animals 

 do not feel pain. Of course it is a silly sort of lie ; he 

 has never given the subject a thought. Though there 

 can be no doubt that the lower one descends in the 

 scale of creation the less do creatures feel pain as we 

 understand it. 



But there is a very different type of man — of 

 thinking man — who makes a somewhat similar state- 

 ment but a more general one, and he puts it in a 

 different way by saying that there is no cruelty in 



