MY SOMALI BOOK 295 



circumstances be less liable to go to pieces. Personally 

 I am inclined to put down the capped bullet as the best 

 under almost all conditions — save only where extreme 

 penetration is required, which is not the case in our 

 present inquiry. The larger entrance wound which 

 it makes, and consequent greater blood trail, is alone 

 an important argument in its favour. 



So much for the -400. The -450 and -470 are 

 almost unnecessarily powerful for any thin-skimied 

 game, and the larger bores certainly so, besides the 

 disadvantage of increasing weight. In magazine rifles 

 the recent introduction, first of the '404 and then of 

 the "425, marks a great advance of power, but they 

 have the defects common to this class of weapon. 

 In the preferable double-barrelled form, the -400 is, 

 for me, a little too heavy to carry about all day, or to 

 be really handy ; so that effective though it usually 

 is, we must search yet a little further for the ideal 

 " tiger stopper." 



In the shot-and-ball guns (Class IV.) we come to 

 an entirely different style of weapon, of which the 

 Paradox is the type. It is essentially a shot gun, 

 but constructed to shoot heavy conical bullets with 

 the accuracy of a "577 Express up to at least one 

 hundred yards. The antithesis of the small-bore 

 H.V. rifle, the most important factor in composing the 

 striking energy of its bullet is weight of lead rather than 

 velocity. To compare two weapons that I have used, 

 the 12-bore Magnum Paradox bullet has a velocity 

 of less than two-thirds that of the '450 Express, but a 

 bullet weighing nearly three times as much, while the 

 muzzle energy is almost identical. 



