VULNERABLE SPOTS IN AN ELEPHANT'S SKULL 



87 



there for at least ten minutes, and were debating whether, as 

 he was still quivering a little, we should in mercy give him 

 another shot to put him out of his misery, when he sprang up 

 as quickly as an}^ cat could do and stood before us yet again. 

 Of course two bullets from the 8-bore rifles greeted him at once, 

 the Count's hitting him in the body whilst mine struck one of his 

 hind legs. He did not seem to mind either a bit. He turned 

 round between us and began to make his way slowly down the 

 slope and then along the right bank of the rivulet. Presently, 

 however, he stopped again, the walking having apparently 

 broken the wounded foot, and only then did a shot from the 

 Count in the temples end his sufferings. 



Equally tenacious of life was another elephant which the 

 Count brought down the next day. He, too, was a solitary 

 bull, which we discovered, after a long search, in the dried-up 

 bed of a brook. Count Teleki opened the attack with two 

 Express bullets, and the elephant fell at the second shot, but got 

 up again and went off. He was followed up and received four 

 bullets in the shoulder from the 8-bore rifle, but did not die 

 until a few minutes after the last. One bullet had passed right 

 through the body and two others had remained sticking under 

 the skin on the further side. 



That the very powerful weapons we used often proved 

 innocuous when aimed at the head of the elephant is explained 

 by the peculiar structure of the skull, consisting as it does of 

 somewhat wide-meshed bony cells, in which a bullet formed of 

 soft metal must split up. The use of Express rifles loaded with 

 steel bullets should, therefore, with African elephants reduce to 

 a minimum the danger with which the sportsmen are so familiar 

 in India. The cellular bony structure has not, however, every- 

 where the same consistency, and in certain portions mere 

 leaden bullets hardened with tin or quicksilver could penetrate 

 to the brain. Such vulnerable spots are the two temples (a in 



