ELEPHANT 195 
down in the chest. The eye and ear shot is easier, if only 
he holds his head steady for a moment, though that mark 
too, is not large. Care must be taken to shoot below the 
line of eye and ear as the bullet will range upward. I 
repeat this, as again and again good men shoot too high 
for this shot, and then the bullet does no permanent harm. 
He may stagger to the blow, but is soon going off, and 
going strong. Ashe swings straight away from you there isa 
good shot to be had, one of the easiest, one of the deadliest 
—and, strangely enough, one seldom taken. His spine 
makes a great curve from its highest point in the centre 
of the back down to the root of the tail, six or seven feet 
long this curve extends, and the vertebrate column is fully 
ten inches across. Land a bullet in it and he comes to a 
halt. It is a big, fair mark. High up in the hump of his 
mighty shoulders is another vital spot. If you are stand- 
ing alongside, and grass and bushes are so high that a clear 
view of the shoulder cannot be had, here his backbone 
is at the very widest where the shoulders rise to it. “Two 
feet six inches or three feet. from the top of his back 
straight above his legs — put a bullet there and he falls 
like a log. 
But I have reserved for the last place my final hints, if 
I may modestly offer them. The shoulder, or just behind 
the kink of his big foreleg is the easiest mark and quite 
deadly enough. ‘There lies the great heart, quite as big as a 
large water bucket, and any man who keeps his wits about 
him, and fires from broadside, can hit it. Let anyone 
examine the skeleton carefully, or stand by while the 
carcass is being cut into, or cut up, and he can satisfy him- 
self on these points I have named. The trouble generally 
is, men fire wildly at the vast mass, plant bullet after bullet 
somewhere. They really don’t know where —and then 
go away and insist that an elephant cannot usually be killed 
without great expenditure of ammunition. At thirty yards, 
