-^ After Elephants with Wandorobo 



sportsman, for even if he does not bag his game he is 

 well rewarded for his pains by all the interest and excite- 

 ment of the chase. But no one who has not himself gone 

 through with it can estimate what it involves. Even with 

 the most perfected equipment in regard to arms, it is often 

 a matter of luck whether you kill the animal outright and 

 on the spot. 



An experience I had in the Berlin Zoological Gardens 

 illustrates this. I was called in to dispatch a huge bull- 

 elephant which had to be killed, and which had rejected 

 all the forms of poison that had been administered to it. 

 In order to give it a quick and painless end I selected a 

 newly invented elephant-rifle, calibre 1075, loaded with 

 4 gr. of smokeless powder and a steel-capped bullet. On 

 reflection the steel cap seemed to me too dangerous in 

 the circumstances, so I had it filed off I shall allow 

 Professor Schmalz to describe what now happened : " The 

 first shot entered the skin between the second and third 

 ribs, and then simply went into splinters. It did no 

 serious damage to the interior organs, and a stag thus 

 wounded would merely take madly to flight. A piece of 

 the cap reached the lung, but only a single splinter 

 had penetrated, causing a slight flow of blood. The 

 second shot was excellently placed, namely just below 

 the root of the lung. It lacerated both the lung 

 arteries and both the bronchial, and thus caused instant 

 death." 



The fact that, with such a charge, a bullet fired at a 

 distance of less than four yards should have gone into 

 splinters in this way says more than one could in a long 



423 



