The patient improved somewhat during the next two days, and on the third took a 16 hours' journey to Bloemfontein, where Mr. Bowlby (who was present at the operation) kindly took him into the Portland Hospital. The pulse gradually rose to 112, the temperature remained on an average from 102 deg. to 103 deg., the respiration rose to 36, the face became somewhat livid, and on the sixth day death occurred rather suddenly, apparently from respiratory failure. For two days before his death the patient sometimes asked for food, &c.; there was occasional twitching of the left angle of the mouth, and, when the posterior wound was manipulated, some twitching of the fingers of the left hand. When the wound was dressed on the fourth day, there were breaking-down blood-clot and signs of incipient suppuration. Mr. Bowlby made a _post-mortem_ examination, and found considerable pulping of the tip of the right frontal and left temporo-sphenoidal lobes, and a thick layer of haemorrhage extending over the whole base of the brain. [Illustration: FIG. 71.--Scale of outer table of Frontal Bone and Diploe. Exact size, from fracture shown in fig. 72] [Illustration: FIG. 72.--Perforating Fracture of Frontal Bone from within Separation of plate outer table. (Low velocity.) 1/2] The injury to the _cranial contents_ varied with the degree of bone injury. Haemorrhage on the surface of the dura may in rare instances have been the sole gross lesion; I never met with such a condition, however. In all the cases in which comminution had occurred, some laceration of the dura, even if not more than surface damage or a punctiform opening, had resulted. In the more serious gutter fractures an elongated rent of some extent usually existed. In the perforating fractures two more or less irregular openings were the rule. The amount of haemorrhage, even if the venous sinuses were implicated, was on the whole surprisingly small, when the cases were such as to survive the injury long enough to be brought to the Field hospital. I never saw a typical case of middle meningeal haemorrhage, although many fractures crossing the line of distribution of the large branches came under observation. Case 60, p. 274, illustrated the fact that the osseous lesions of lesser apparent degree are sometimes the more to be feared in the matter of haemorrhage, as compression is more readily developed. The degree of injury to the brain depended on the depth of the track, the resistance offered by the bones of any individual skull, the weight of the patient, but chiefly on the degree of velocity retained by the bullet. It was sometimes slight and local as far as symptoms would guide us; but in the majority of cases out of all proportion to the apparent bone lesion, if the range was at all a short one. Cases illustrative of these injuries are included under the heading of symptoms.