EARLY DAYS IN OUDH 29 
common, though with a rifle they are rare. There 
are, too, some elephants reserved for the use of the 
mighty, who have reduced to a minimum the faults 
of their species, but I write of the animal that most 
of us could expect to procure and improve with daily 
intercourse and practice. The officer under whom I 
worked in Kheri was a gentleman of the name of 
Dodsworth, and as a shot I have never seen him 
equalled. Using an antiquated pinfire 12-bore gun, 
‘and reloading his cartridges till they would no 
longer hold the charge, he never seemed to miss. 
For winged game he did not take the trouble to 
stop the elephant, and his shooting with a spherical 
ball from the same weapon was almost miraculous, 
for he frequently killed running hares and flying 
peafowl with a bullet; but this skill was acquired 
by passing many hours daily on his elephant, so 
that with the superior weapons of the present time 
it seems probable that nothing would have escaped 
him. 
In those days we were in the habit of spending a 
fortnight of the month of May in Nepal, more for 
the sake of good-fellowship and a change than because 
we expected better sport there than in the Govern- 
ment forest. The average bag, with fifteen or twenty 
elephants, was about twenty tigers, panthers, and 
bears, and as many deer as one cared to shoot. But 
these trips never afforded me much satisfaction, for 
I felt that the tiger had seldom any chance against 
so many rifles, while as a trophy his skin during the 
summer months was at its worst; moreover, the old 
rule of first shot to confer ownership was not con- 
ducive to good sport, for it led to overeagerness -in 
