644 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



or may not have Its suspicions aroused when they fly away. 

 If a party is seen on the wing, by watching their flight until 

 they Hght it may be possible to discover the rhino. 



The hook-lipped rhino is dull of wit and eyesight. Its 

 sense of smell is good, and so is its hearing; but its vision 

 is astonishingly bad. We doubt if it sees better than a very 

 near-sighted man. Again and again we have walked up to 

 one, on an absolutely bare and level plain, to within a hun- 

 dred yards without its paying the least heed. We wore 

 dull-colored clothes, of course, and made no abrupt motions; 

 but it was unnecessary to take advantage of cover until we 

 were well within a hundred yards. In thick brush it is 

 often difficult to approach, for all bush-dwellers are harder 

 to approach than plains-dwellers, as they cannot be seen 

 until within a distance so short that both their hearing and 

 their smell have in all probability given them warning. 

 But in all places, bush, forest, and open plain, it is the easiest 

 to approach of all the creatures that dwell in that particu- 

 lar habitat, because of the dulness of its brain-matter and 

 the poorness of its vision. It is the most stupid of the very 

 big creatures. It seems to have a marvellous memory for 

 local geography, as is shown by the way it will traverse 

 many miles of country to some remote water-hole in the mid- 

 dle of a vast and monotonous plain; and it has the patience 

 to stand motionless for many minutes listening for anything 

 suspicious. But these seem to be well-nigh its only lines of 

 mental effort. Its life is passed in feeding, travelling to and 

 from water, sleeping, and when awake and at leisure either 

 fidgeting, or much more often standing motionless to rest. 

 There is occasional love-making and the exhibition of occa- 

 sional fits of truculence and petulance or of muddled curi- 



