268 THE FAUNA OF BRITISH EAST AFRICA 



possible that the old " white rhinoceros " is a different and 

 extincc species, belonging to the square-mouthed group. 



Though disease unquestionably aids in the work of exter- 

 mination, it can scarcely cause the destruction of whole faunas, 

 for one malady only seems to attack a few species. We must 

 look to some other cause to account for the vast accumulations 

 of bones belonging to animals of different species and of different 

 habits, from which most of the remains of fossil mammalia have 

 been derived. These huge piles of bones have always been a 

 puzzle to geologists, for, as Sir Henry Howorth remarks — 

 " Nor would any causes we know to be operating now account 

 for the caches or heaps of incongruous beasts found in pre- 

 cisely the same fresh condition, and yet piled together in 

 confused masses. This mixture of animals of different habits 

 and habitats— of carnivores, and pachyderms and herbivores — 

 is most puzzling, especially when the remains show so often a 

 common freshness and an unworn and ungnawed appearance. 

 Death certainly has no favourites, and is singularly neutral in 

 its methods ; but it does not, in its normal moods at all 

 events, collect great mylodons and thickly-hided megatheres, 

 nimble opossums and safely-cuirassed glyptodons, cavies and 

 mastodons, and kill them together and bury them together."' 



This singular association of bones is one of the arguments 

 on which Sir Henry Howorth bases his theory of the destruc- 

 tion of the great extinct mammalia by a deluge. On the 

 march across Laikipia, however, a different explanation of the 

 phenomenon impressed itself forcibly, and even painfully, on 

 my mind. The plateau had been described to me as one of the 

 richest game-fields in Africa, and I trusted to it to supplement 

 our scanty food supply. 



Here and there around a water-hole we found acres of 

 ground white with the bones of rhinoceros and zebra, gazelle 

 and antelope, jackal and hyena, and among them we once 

 observed the remains of a lion. All the bones of the skeletons 

 were there, and they were fresh and ungnawed. The explana- 

 tion is simple. The year before there had been a drought, 

 which had cleared both game and people from the district. 

 Those which did not migrate crowded round the dwindling 

 pools, and fought for the last drop of water. These accumu- 



1 H. H. Howorth, The Alammoth and the Flood {iZ^j), pp. 345-346. 



