[4] Latterly many sportsmen in the tropics have taken again to the use of very large-calibre rifles. Charges of as much as 21 gr. of black powder and a 26¾ mm. bullet are employed with them. It is to the kick of such a ride that the author owes the scar which is visible in the portrait serving as frontispiece to this book—an “untouched” photograph, like all the others.
[5] See With Flashlight and Rifle.
[6] In winter, Siberia affords a refuge to beautiful long-haired tigers, such as can be seen in the Berlin Zoological Gardens.
[7] For this information I am indebted to the kindness of the experienced Russian hunter Ceslav von Wancowitz.
[8] Herr Niedieck also underwent a similar experience. See his book Mit der Büchse in fünf Weltteilen, and my own With Flashlight and Rifle.
[9] Little elephants only a yard high used to inhabit Malta, and there still lives, according to Hagenbeck, the experienced zoologist of Hamburg, a dwarf species of elephant in yet unexplored districts of West Africa.
[10] Experienced German hunters make a special plea for the use of rifles of heavier calibre. Many English hunters are of the same opinion.
[11] The raison d’être of these powerful weapons of the African elephant is a difficult question. Why did the extinct mammoth carry such very different tusks, curving upwards? Why has the Indian elephant such small tusks, and the Ceylon elephant hardly any at all, whilst the African’s are so huge and heavy?
[12] On that occasion I had not at hand a telephoto-lens of sufficient range.
[13] The well-known naturalist, Hagenbeck, remembers the immense numbers of giraffes which were bagged in the Sudan some thirty years ago.