THE WHITE RHINOCEROS. 



" Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant." So 

 wrote Tacitus centuries ago : but while the methods 

 practised by the ancients were crude enough, 

 unhappily in later times also men have made a 

 wilderness, and called it peace. To the naturalist 

 the story of the development of South Africa 

 by Europeans, as narrated in countless volumes 

 of history and travel, of colonisation and sport, 

 reveals so dire a transformation from a paradise 

 to a (zoologically) dead world, that it may be 

 interesting to consider briefly the history of this 

 change. 



The early colonists found South Africa teeming 

 with a magnificent profusion of great game animals, 

 abundant even in the colony itself, whilst the far 

 interior was tenanted by a countless mammalian 

 population of marvellous diversity and interest. 

 The lion abounded everywhere, preying on giraffe 

 and buffalo, quagga and zebra ; the leopard, 

 stealthy, yet daring, carried off the settlers' dogs ; 

 the cheetah frequented the cracked mud-flats of 

 the great Karroo, which it shared with bright- 

 coloured troops of blesbok and squadrons of 

 quagga and black wildebeest ; in the rivers floated 

 the slate-coloured forms of countless hippopotami, 

 which made the air resound with their bellowings, 

 whilst similar unwieldly monsters crashed heavily 



