Gimli's forgetfulness?
 

At Helm's Deep Gimli tells Eomer: "till now I have hewed naught but wood since Moria". And yet when Boromir died Legolas told Aragorn that he and Gimli had killed many Orcs around Parth Galen.

Explanation?

Yep, a slip. Even Homer nods occasionally.

People do forget things, or an uncorrected typo, or maybe gimli grabbed them from behind while. Legolas slit their throats :cool:

Or maybe Gimli was being a bit disingenuous with the "we" part, when really he was just trying to catch up while shield-surfing Leggy mowed 'em down with his machine-bow.....

Snork... more seriously, surely an axe ia more of a melée weapon and less suited to the stealth that hunted suggests. Could be a sniper spotter arrangement save that a dwarf's eyes aren't going to improve on an elf's. So yep WCH is probably right. At best Gimli held Leggy's coat and covered his back.

The actual quote from Legolas was:

Maybe both hunted, Legolas did the slaying, and he just didn't want to be pedantic.

That, or Gimli thought Orcs were made of wood. ;)

Gimli's a damnable liar! Never trust a Dwarf.

Gimli's forgetfulness? Pipeweed induced.

This is a well-known discrepancy. See http://www.google.ca/search?q=till+n...iw=904&bih=507 for numerous comments.

It has not been corrected because mostly Christopher Tolkien and Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull have only corrected discrepancies where the change is minor. Wayne G. Hammond and Chistina Scull mention in “NOTE ON THE 50ᵀᴴ ANNIVERSARY EDITION” in current publications of Fellowship:

But those inconsistencies of content, such as Gimli’s famous (and erroneous) statement in Book III, Chapter 7, ‘Till now I have hewn naught but wood since I left Moria’, which would require rewriting rather than than simple correction, remain unchanged.

Well, Eomer's Riders did burn them.....

But more than that- you can build a bridge out of them! "Driven onward in madness, they.....bridged the dike with their dead."

But to my knowledge nobody ever conducted an Orc/duck weigh-off

But has anyone tried to float an orc? Are they waterfunks like the Nazgûl?

They don't sink like Hobbits.