It is also thinner than linen or calico, and the ball is therefore more easily rammed down.
All balls should be made of pure lead, without any hardening mixture.
It was formerly the fashion to use zinc balls, and lead with a mixture of tin, etc., in elephant-shooting.

This was not only unnecessary, but the balls, from a loss of weight by admixture with lighter metals, lost force in a proportionate degree.

Lead may be a soft metal, but it is much harder than any animal's skull, and if a tallow candle can be shot through a deal board, surely a leaden bullet is hard enough for an elephant's head.
I once tried a very conclusive experiment on the power of balls of various metals propelled by an equal charge of powder.
I had a piece of wrought iron five-eights of an inch thick, and six feet high by two in breadth.

I fired at this at one hundred and seventy yards with my two-grooved four-ounce rifle, with a reduced charge of six drachms of powder and a ball of pure lead.

It bulged the iron like a piece of putty, and split the centre of the bulged spot into a star, through the crevice of which I could pass a pen-blade.
A ball composed of half zinc and half lead, fired from the same distance, hardly produced a perceptible effect upon the iron target.
It just slightly indented it.
I then tried a ball of one-third zinc and two-thirds lead, but there was no perceptible difference in the effect.
I subsequently tried a tin bill, and again a zinc ball, but neither of them produced any other effect than slightly to indent the iron.
I tried all these experiments again at fifty yards' range, with the same advantage in favor of the pure lead; and at this reduced distance a double-barreled No.