His Vitality 253 



or what part of it was penetrated, we must assume that 

 it was not the upper part of it, where all the large blood- 

 vessels are. These could not have been severed, or the 

 bear could not have run so far. 



This brings up another important and very interesting 

 question, namely, how far can an animal travel after having 

 been actually shot through the heart ? The answer is, 

 that it depends altogether upon which part of the heart the 

 ball hits. Some time since, while talking with Dr. Alex- 

 ander Lambert of New York, who has had a wide experi- 

 ence in hunting large game, I asked him if he had ever 

 known an animal to travel any distance after it had re- 

 ceived a shot through the top of the heart, severing all the 

 large blood-vessels. He replied that I was the first hunter 

 he had ever known that made any distinction in heart 

 shots, and that he had never seen an animal survive such 

 a shot as I described more than momentarily. Once he 

 so shot a caribou that was standing still when the shot 

 was fired, and the animal made a couple of spasmodic 

 leaps and covered some fifty feet after being hit. But 

 even this was exceptional. As a rule, an animal so hit 

 drops in its tracks. 



On the other hand, the doctor brought out a work on 

 the surgery of the heart and lungs, and showed me that 

 shots in the heart other than the one mentioned were 

 not even necessarily fatal. The following are some 

 notes taken from this book: 



"Pare (1552) tells of a duellist who ran two hundred 

 paces after receiving a sword thrust through the heart 

 making a hole large enough to admit the finger, and who 

 fought in a vicious manner all the way. 



