THE PASSING OF THE WILD 321 



of them cows, in an afternoon, and a native, 

 armed with a rifle, destroyed seventeen in 

 Somaliland in one day. And all for what ? 

 That we may brush our hair with ivory-backed 

 brushes and play billiards with ivory balls. 

 So long as the bristles are good, it makes 

 no difference whatever with what material 

 the brushes are backed, and ebony is quite 

 as decorative. As for billiard balls, it is quite 

 as easy, with practice, to play the game with 

 those made of bonzoline and other substitutes. 



The rhinoceros, for the butchery of which 

 there is even less commercial justification, has 

 been treated in the same fashion. Andersson 

 once killed eight of these huge brutes in five 

 hours, and even Mr. Roosevelt and his son 

 shot no fewer than nine of the vanishing 

 "white" kind on their African trip. I have 

 the warmest personal regard for the strenuous 

 ex-President, but it would have been still 

 warmer if he had taken only one of these 

 heads back to his country. 



One of the factors in the diminution of big 

 game of late years has been the wonderful 

 improvement in the machinery devised for its 

 slaughter. When it is remembered that a 

 450 Winchester, charged with ninety grains 

 of powder and three hundred grains of lead, 

 can send a bullet clean through eight inches 

 of hard wood at fifty yards range, it will be 



