334 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



pour through the hole a hot mixture of equal parts of 

 Babbitt-metal and tin. A mold for casting points like 

 this may be easily made by half-filling the upper part 

 of common molds with two pieces of brass or iron 

 brazed in. The points may then be put in another 

 mold and lead poured around them. But you can 

 easily make all you need by the other method. From 

 a .4o-caliber rifle with sixty grains of powder I once 

 shot one of these through two cast-iron stove-griddles 

 and two jawbones of an ox all wedged together in a 

 box, and the ball got through the other side of the 

 box. Such balls are, however, of no use for ordinary 

 hunting. 



It is not many years since the English sportsmen in 

 India commenced using a short cylindrical ball with a 

 hole or well in the front, instead of the ponderous 

 round balls and solid bolts they had before used for 

 tigers and other dangerous game. These were some- 

 times made explosive by the insertion of a cartridge 

 of some kind in the hole. Others were fired without 

 any explosive filling, leaving the ball to fly open with 

 its own force upon striking. 



Some of the British sportsmen brought their rifles 

 to this country on hunting-trips, and it was not 

 long before some of our own countrymen tried these 

 bullets. 



As about every other great improvement, extrava- 

 gant nonsense was soon told about them. " Blowing 

 open the head of a grizzly-bear" with a .22-caliber 

 pistol-cartridge inserted in the ball, as if the head 

 were a snuff-box, " pulverizing" heads as if they were 

 puff-balls, were among the least marvelous of the ef- 

 fects attributed to them. Some discoursed of " ex- 

 press shock" as if the ball were a condensed thun- 



