290 MY SOMALI BOOK 



an elephant, and upset in a canoe by a hippo. And he 

 always uses a '256 Mannlicher : Post hoc ergo propter 

 hoc is not always true, but when we find his colleague 

 of the pen, Mr. Lyell, writing in an article in The Field, 

 that Captain Stigand's reliance on the '256 may 

 account for some of his accidents, we can do no less than 

 agree that there may be something in it. 



The best of men are not infallible, and how many 

 are there really in the front rank as compared with 

 the crowd of average men ? If you are one of the 

 former you need no advice from me : otherwise, I say, 

 eschew absolutety rifles like the -303 and '256 Mann- 

 licher for dangerous game. If the light weight of a 

 magazine rifle attracts you, you can have it in weapons 

 far more powerful than either of these. 



Where then is the dividing line to be drawn ? 

 I have for convenience' sake, if somewhat arbitrarily, 

 divided the rifles in Class II., arranged according to 

 energy, into three main groups. The second group 

 (6) contains a number of rifles taking a great variety 

 of cartridges ; the only one of these of which I have 

 any personal experience is the '355 Mannlicher, a good 

 rifle for most antelope, but which certainly is not 

 capable of dealing a sufficiently heavy blow to make 

 it a safe weapon for lion. Others of this group are 

 more powerful, but none of them can be considered 

 likely to be more effective than the ordinary '500 

 black powder Express which we have decided does not 

 quite come up to our standard. 



In group (c) we have rifles shooting cartridges with 

 energy approximating to that of the '500 Magnum 

 and '577 Express. With suitable bullets any of these 



