ELEPHANTS. , 159 



tusker was almost on the top of him, viz., through the roof 

 of the mouth. When an elephant charges with trunk curled 

 and head raised, as is sometimes their custom, few rifles 

 can shoot hard enough to reach the brain, as in addition to 

 the bony portion of the skull by which it is protected, the 

 trunk must first be perforated by the projectile, but in 

 most cases he would be staggered by the impact, and give 

 -an opening for the left barrel ; if, however, the firer was on 

 higher ground this difficulty would not exist, as he would 

 then be above the level of the trunk. Elephants are some- 

 times killed by the shot behind the shoulder, but a large 

 bore and heavy charge of powder are of course advisable, if 

 not absolutely necessary, for this. I once tried it with a 

 12-bore rifle, burning 7-| drachms of powder, behind a steel- 

 tipped conical bullet, and, greatly to my surprise, found that 

 the bullet and tip had parted company, the latter emerging 

 behind the shoulder on the opposite side. The late Frank 

 Gordon Gumming, who was with me at the time, and had 

 put two bullets into the same tusker's head (which was 

 hidden from me), considered that the projectile had passed 

 between the ribs, this being the only way to account for 

 the extraordinary penetration fuller particulars of this 

 incident are given further on in this chapter. On several 

 subsequent occasions the same thing occurred with bison, 

 when the charge of powder was but six drachms. The 

 steel tip was smaller in diameter than the rest of the 

 projectile, and was very sharp at the point, but its base had 

 not much hold on the lead (vide illustration a on next page, 

 in which the shaded portion represents the tip), some that 

 were cut out of bison had assumed the shape b, when pro- 

 pelled by 2^ drachms of powder from my second rifle. 

 These had only penetrated a few inches, and were worse 

 than useless, merely goading the unfortunate animal. It i^ 



