chap. ii. RHINOCEROS. 115 



they strike. When fired at limbs, such bullets produce 

 no great shock to the animal's system, generally only 

 boring a hole through, and not breaking the bone, the 

 practical result of which is that the animal will go ten 

 miles further and stand double the number of shots — will 

 indeed often go so far as to render it impossible to over- 

 take it. Clean wounds are not so immediately disabling 

 as those of an opposite nature, and though probably many, 

 if not most, animals, that get away at the time, shot 

 through and through, ultimately die, yet that is a very 

 poor consolation indeed to the sportsman. 



So much for the proper hardening of the bullets, their 

 weight, which principally depends upon the size of the 

 gun used, producing in its own way very similar results. 

 The advocates of small bores say that their use requires 

 more skill, while it makes the shooting neater and cleaner, 

 and inflicts less pain. This must at once be allowed to be 

 the case with all the small game, and even with many of 

 the larger antelopes. It is undoubtedly far prettier work, 

 and more sportsmanlike, to kill with a single ball, even 

 though not larger than a pea, than to ultimately cause the 

 death of an animal from weakness and loss of blood, after 

 repeated shots, no one of which is in itself immediately 

 fatal ; and were it possible to carry it out in shooting the 

 really large game, there could be no argument about the 

 matter. Unfortunately this is impossible. Practice teaches 

 us that no amount of experience or deadliness of aim suffices, 

 even when large balls are used, to render the killing of 

 such animals as elephants (I am speaking of the African 

 species, which presents no certain mark in its forehead, as 

 its East Indian confrere does) and rhinoceroses, and, in a 



