44 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



An elephant is an easy animal to shoot if the sportsman 

 knows where to aim and can shoot straight ; those are 

 the two important things. The brain lies in a cavity 

 behind a very thin honey-combed wall of bone ; this 

 penetrated by a bullet means instantaneous death. Men 

 may be aware of this and other facts theoretically, yet get 

 flurried and fail, coming to grief themselves very likely. 

 And it is hard to get up any pity for those whose want of 

 skill causes them to cripple or butcher animals as capable of 

 enjoying life as themselves. 



Ardent sportsman as my husband was, yet a devoted 

 lover of all creatures great and small, until I knew his 

 argument in defence of sport it seemed to me impossible 

 to reconcile the two passions in one mind. His view was 

 that a well-aimed bullet was most surely better for an 

 animal than a lingering death by starvation and disease in 

 old age, and being harried in its extremity by others of 

 its kind ; for such is the universal practice in nature. A 

 case in point occurred with a tiger he once shot, which was 

 crawling painfully to a stream to drink, and looked to be 

 in the last stage of emaciation when he caught sight of it. 

 In a moment the pitiful life was mercifully and swiftly — 

 almost painlessly — ended. A poor, famished beast it was, 

 and its stomach was found to be quite empty ; the fine 

 face was grey with age, and the eyes were blurred ; teeth 

 and claws were worn down. The coat, dull and mangy 

 from ill-nourishment and disease, showed wound marks 

 that witnessed to some struggle in which the wretched 

 creature had been worsted. Such a death in life would 

 be inevitable at the finish were wild animals never hunted 

 and shot. 



Monkeys, however, are an exception to the unamiable 

 practice mentioned above, for they convey their sick and 

 hurt into safety, tending them in a very touching manner, 

 and uttering cries of distress. Such cries often led F. 



