182 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



known ; and hitherto the species had been represented 

 only by a few of the immensely long fore-horns and 

 one complete head. There is another complete head 

 in the Cape Town Museum — the head of the last 

 ever shot by Mr. Selous. No better instance of the 

 alarming rate at which the great fauna of the world 

 are being exterminated can be furnished than the 

 case of the white rhinoceros. Like many other 

 South African animals, this rhinoceros (Rhinoceros 

 simus, first discovered by Dr. Burchell in 1812) had 

 a singularly restricted habitat. Its modern range 

 has invariably been between the Orange River and 

 the Zambesi, and it has never been found north of 

 the latter river. There can be little doubt, I think, 

 that, prior to the beginning of this century, this 

 enormous terrestrial mammal — the greatest of known 

 creatures after the elephant — wandered upon the 

 great grassy plains of Bushmanland (a continuation 

 of the Kalahari Desert), just south of the Orange 

 River. Native tradition has it so. And Mr., after- 

 wards Sir John, Barrow, a very competent 

 observer and painstaking naturalist, who explored 

 the Cape in 1797, expressly mentions at p. 395 of 

 his excellent Travels into the Interior of South- 

 ern Africa that this animal was "not uncommon 

 on the skirts of the Colony behind the Hantam 

 Mountains, and seems to be a variety only of the 

 African two-horned rhinoceros." The district men- 



