NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 79 



Elephant hunter are, after all, somewhat precarious, depending 

 not only upon a considerable amount of personal exertion, but 

 also, to a great extent, upon the luck of falling in with herds 

 from which fine old tuskers may be killed. Considering that 

 most of the Elephants killed by him were hunted on foot instead 

 of on horseback, he seems to have been wonderfully successful. 

 In the course of four months he killed to his own gun forty-two 

 Elephants, eleven of which were big bulls, whose tusks averaged 

 44 lbs. apiece. He also shot several very fine cow Elephants, 

 whose tusks weighed from 15 lbs to 16 lbs. The tusks of the 

 largest bull killed, when thoroughly dried out, weighed 74 lbs. 

 each. The weapon used was a smooth-bore elephant gun, carry- 

 ing a four-ounce round bullet hardened with zinc and quicksilver, 

 and backed by 15 drachms of coarse powder — in other words, a 

 charge Jive times as heavy as that used by the majority of 

 sportsmen for shooting game in England ! The man who can 

 stand the frequent employment of such a charge as this must 

 indeed have nerves of iron. 



But it is not only in the light of a successful Elephant-hunter 

 that the author is to be regarded. During his explorations 

 beyond the Zambesi, on the River Chobe, and in the Matabele 

 and Mashuna countries, his powers of observation were fully 

 exercised in noting the species of large Mammalia met with, 

 especially the Antelopes, and in recording particulars of their 

 geographical distribution. His remarks on this subject, accom- 

 panied with drawings of the heads of the different species 

 of Antelopes, seen or shot by him at various times and in 

 various places, are of special interest to naturalists, since they 

 not only embody the results of many years personal experience, 

 but in many cases convey information concerning the haunts and 

 habits of species about which hardly anything was previously 

 known. 



Chapter XII. entitled "Notes upon South African Rhino- 

 ceroses," and Chapter XIII. " Notes upon South Central African 

 Antelopes," may be specially mentioned as containing valuable 

 statistics, and must be regarded as affording the latest and best 

 information on the subjects of which they treat. 



On the whole, although the book is chiefly occupied with 

 hunting incidents, and furnishes, it must be confessed, a record 

 of terrible slaughter, it contains many observations on the habits 



