148 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



long anterior horn of the veritable simus figured 

 in Campbell's Travels. 



Attempts have been made to associate R. holm- 

 woodi with the black rhinoceros, but they 

 seem to have been initiated prior to Major 

 Gibbons' discovery in 1900, before which date 

 simus was unknown in East and North East 

 Africa. Mr. Rowland Ward, writing to the 

 "Field," on November 17th, 1894, stated that 

 he had seen a horn of the white rhinoceros 

 which had been brought from what is now 

 British East African territory, and many miles 

 from any known haunt of the species ; Count 

 Teleki mentions a white rhinoceros amongst 

 the animals shot by his party during his Lake 

 Rudolph expedition of 1887-88. Although this 

 constitutes a considerable mass of evidence, it is 

 by no means all, for on examining the records of 

 the past, one finds many obscure hints of the 

 presence of this species north of the Zambesi. 

 Strange to say, these records appear to have been 

 utterly ignored by naturalists, though they have 

 long been published to the world ; the facts are 

 here restated as follows : 



I. The earliest evidence of the existence of 

 R. simus north of the Zambesi is probably that 

 of Mr. Salt, the Abyssinian traveller, who on his 

 return in 181 1 presented a trophy (consisting of 

 anterior and posterior horns) to the Royal College 



