374 abstracts: mammalogy 



MAMMALOGY. — The white rhinoceros. Edmund Heller. Smith- 

 sonian Miscellaneous Collections 61^: 1-77, plates 1-29, text figs. 

 1-3, 2 maps. October, 1913. 



The first portion of the present paper is devoted to the itinerary of the 

 Smithsonian African Expedition, mider the direction of Colonel Roose- 

 velt, and a general description of the Lado Enclave, where the white 

 rhinoceroses were secured, together with a short account of its chief 

 floral features. The systematic part which follows covers 30 pages, in 

 which are comprised : A discussion of the generic characters of the living 

 and extinct forms of rhinoceroses ana their probable derivation; dental 

 peculiarities of the white rhinoceros; subspecific characters of the Nile 

 race; and a description of its coloration, external form, size, geographical 

 range, and habits, as well as a history of its discovery. In the following 

 10 pages Colonel Roosevelt 's account of the shooting and field natural 

 history of the species is quoted. Several pages are then devoted to a 

 complete bibliography, followed by twenty pages of explanatory matter 

 referring to the plates of skulls. The numerous illustrations consist of 

 8 plates showing the country, natives, and floral features; 5 views of 

 white rhinoceroses in the flesh; 2 of live specimens taken on the shooting 

 grounds; and 2 of mounted specimens in the National Museum. The 

 20 plates of skulls consist of 99 separate figures illustrating all the speci- 

 mens collected by the expedition, besides specimens of related genera 

 in the British Museum, U. S. National Museum and other institutions. 

 Of the two maps one iflustrates the distribution of the species throughout 

 its whole African range, and the other the distribution of the Nile race 

 in the Lado Enclave of the Upper Nile region. 



The white rhinoceros, because of its remarkably elongate skull and the 

 highly specialized structure of its cheek-teeth, is treated as a distinct 

 generic type and the sole representative of the genus Ceratotherium. 

 The Nile form, Cottoni, was originally described as a species, but a com- 

 parison of the large series of specimens now in the National Museum 

 with the South African specimens preserved in European museums has 

 shown it to be only a rather slight subspecies characterized chiefly by 

 the somewhat flatter dorsal outline of its skull, this notwithstanding 

 that the two forms are separated by 1000 miles of territory and have 

 doubtless been thus separated for a great length of time. 



Zoologists have usually considered the white rhinoceros as a close blood 

 relative of the recently extinct woolly rhinoceros of northern Europe, 

 but a comparative study of the skulls of the two shows them to be f unda- 



