142 
MAMMALIA. 
[Chap. IV. 
CHAP. IV. 
THE ELEPHANT. 
Elephant Shooting. 
As the shooting of an elephant, whatever endurance and 
adroitness the sport may display in other respects, requires 
the smallest possible skill as a marksman, the numbers 
which are annually slain in this way may be regarded as 
evidence of the multitudes abounding in those parts of 
Ceylon to which they resort. One officer, Major Eogees, 
killed upwards of 1400 ; another, Captain GtALLwey, has 
the credit of slaying more than half that number ; Major 
Skinner, the Commissioner of Roads, almost as many ; and 
less persevering aspirants follow at humbler distances. 1 
1 To persons like myself, who 
are not addicted to what is called 
" sport," the statement of these 
wholesale slaughters is calculated 
to excite surprise and curiosity as 
to the nature of a passion that 
impels men to self-exposure and 
privation, in a pursuit which pre*- 
sents nothing but the monotonous 
recurrence of scenes of blood and 
suffering, Mr, Baker, who has 
recently published, under the title 
of " The Rifle and the Hound in 
Ceylon" an account of his exploits 
in the forest, gives us the assur* 
ance that " all real sportsmen are 
tender-hearted men, who shun cru- 
elty to an animal, and are easily 
moved by a tale of distress and 
that although man is naturally 
bloodthirsty, and a beast of prey 
by instinct, yet that the true 
sportsman is distinguished from 
the rest of the human race by his 
" love of nature and of noble sce- 
nery," In support of this preten- 
sion to a gentler nature than the 
rest of mankind, the author pro- 
ceeds to attest his own abhorrence 
Of cruelty by narrating the suf- 
ferings of an old hound, which, 
although "toothless," he cheered 
on to assail a boar at bay, but the 
poor dog recoiled "covered with 
blood, cut nearly in half, with a 
wound fourteen inches in length, 
from the lower part of the belly, 
passing up the flank, completely 
