142 



MAMMALIA. 



[Chap. IT. 



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 Sogers, 

 killed upwards of 1400 ; another, Captain GrALLWEY, has 

 the credit of slaying more than half that number ; Major 

 Skinner, the Commissioner of Eoads, 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 Mood and 

 suffering. Mn Baker, who has 

 recently published, under the title 

 of " The Bifle 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 tafa 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 



