396 RHINOCEROS OF THE LADO [ch. xiv 



big ears thrown forward. I fired for the chest, and the 

 heavy Holland bullet knocked it clean off its feet. 

 Squealing loudly it rose again, but it was clearly done 

 for, and it never got ten yards from where it had been 

 lying. 



At the shot four other rliino rose. One bolted to the 

 right, two others ran to the left. Firing through the 

 grass Kermit wounded a bull and followed it for a long 

 distance, but could not overtake it : ten days later, ^ 

 however, he found the carcass, and saved the skull and 

 horns. Meanwhile I killed a calf, which was needed 

 for the Museum ; the rhino I had already shot was a 

 full-grown cow, doubtless the calfs mother. As the 

 rhino rose I was struck by their likeness to the picture 

 of the white rhino in Cornwallis Harris's folio of the 

 big game of South Africa seventy years ago. They 

 were totally different in look from the common rhino, 

 seeming to stand higher and to be shorter in proportion 

 to their height, while the hump and the huge, ungainly, 

 square-mouthed head added to the dissimilarity. The 

 common rhino is in colour a very dark slate grey ; 

 these were a rather lighter slate grey ; but this was 

 probably a mere individual peculiarity, for the best 

 observers say that they are of the same hue. The 

 muzzle is broad and square, and the upper lip without a 

 vestige of the curved, prehensile development which 

 makes the upper lip of a common rhino look like the 

 hook of a turtle's beak. The stomachs contained nothing 

 but grass ; it is a grazing, not a browsing, animal. 



There were some white egrets — not, as is usually the 

 case with both rhinos and elephants, the cow heron, but 



^ Kermit on this occasion was using the double-barrelled riHe 

 which had been most i^indiy lent him for the trip by Mr. John Jay 

 White, of New York. 



