One gentleman in Ceylon, not less distinguished for his genuine kindness of heart, than for his marvellous success in shooting elephants, avowed to me that the eagerness with which he found himself impelled to pursue them had often excited surprise in his own mind; and although he had never read the theory of Lord Kames, or the speculations of Vicesimus Knox, he had come to the conclusion that the passion thus excited within him was a remnant of the hunter’s instinct, with which man was originally endowed to enable him, by the chase, to support existence in a state of nature, and which, though rendered dormant by civilisation, had not been utterly eradicated. This theory is at least more consistent and intelligible than the “love of nature and scenery,” sentimentally propounded by the author quoted above. [105] The vulnerability of the elephant in this region of the head was known to the ancients, and PLINY, describing a combat of elephants in the amphitheatre at Rome, says, that one was slain by a single blow, “pilum sub oculo adactum, in vitalia capitis venerat.” (Lib. viii. c. 7.) Notwithstanding the comparative facility of access to the brain afforded at this spot, an ordinary leaden bullet is not certain to penetrate, and frequently becomes flattened. The hunters, to counteract this, are accustomed to harden the ball, by the introduction of a small portion of type-metal along with the lead. [106] “The head is so peculiarly formed that the ball either passes over the brain, or lodges in the immensely solid bones and cartilages that contain the roots of the tusks.... The brain of the African species, he says, rests upon a plate of bone exactly above the roots of the upper grinders and is thus wonderfully protected from a front shot, as it lies so low that the ball passes over it when the elephant raises his head, which he invariably does when in anger, until close to the object of his attack.... I had always held the opinion that the African elephant might be killed with the same facility as that of Ceylon _by a forehead shot_; but I have found by much experience that I was entirely wrong and that although by chance an African elephant may be killed by the front shot, it is the exception to the rule.” (_The Albert Nyanza_, vol. i. p. 277.)