650 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



gerous to assail than the buffalo, because it often had to be 

 attacked where there were no trees. 



The rhinoceros, unlike the elephant and buffalo, does not 

 haunt the neighborhood of the negro villages, to make raids 

 on the fields and gardens. It is a beast of the lonely wastes. 

 Even in the dry desert it is at home if there is an occasional 

 pool of water; and it is only at these desert drinking-pools, 

 when driven thither by thirst, that the solitude-loving beasts 

 are found in any number. A score or over may congregate 

 at night round such a pool, to which each has trodden his 

 path through a dozen miles of barren wilderness; and there 

 they may fight for the water. If two or three rhinoceroses — 

 a cow and calf, or a bull and a cow, perhaps with a calf— come 

 to such a pool together they do not loiter in the neighbor- 

 hood. But we have seen a single rhino remain by such a 

 pool, motionless for an hour, until another appeared, when 

 the two beasts approached each other, as if for company. It 

 seemed as if they had each known that the other would 

 come there about that time, and had reckoned on the meet- 

 ing. We have seen the same thing with other game, where 

 one individual waited with evident expectancy, as if at a 

 rendezvous, until another of the same species appeared. 

 But of course it is possible that in these cases the waiting 

 animal's keen senses made it aware that the other was some- 

 where in the neighborhood long before the onlooker could 

 discern the faintest hint of its presence. 



Key to the Races of bicornis 



Size larger, the skull exceeding 21 inches in length; concavity of upper 

 profile deep, more than 2]^ inches bicornis 



Size smaller, the skull 20 inches or less in length; concavity of upper 

 profile 2 inches or less in depth somaliensis 



