136 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



africana), ever alert to give their dull-witted 

 hosts notice of approaching danger by their shrill 

 cries, or by thrusting their beaks into their ears. 

 Such a picture of wild life is now seldom to be 

 witnessed in Southern Africa, owing to the ruin 

 which has overtaken the white rhinoceros nation 

 throughout all the vast grass-lands from the Orange 

 River to the Zambesi. 



The first definite sign of the decadence of 

 Rhinoceros simus which appears on studying the 

 history of the species, is a circumstance related 

 by Sir Andrew Smith. He tells us that when his 

 expedition of 1836 passed into Bechuanaland, the 

 white rhinoceros had already receded further north, 

 owing to continual persecution, and was not found 

 within a hundred miles of Letakoo, where Burchell 

 had met with it in abundance in 1812. For many 

 years afterwards, however, the animal continued 

 plentiful in the far interior. Harris found it 

 extremely abundant in the Cashan mountains 

 (Magaliesberg), the future environs of Pretoria 

 being in 1836 and for long afterwards a vast natural 

 zoological park, replete with great game. Cumming, 

 Andersson, Oswell, and others have left behind 

 records showing that in the middle of the 

 last century simus was still plentiful. Several 

 causes, however, were fast contributing to its 

 downfall. In 1850 the north-trekking Boers 

 began systematically to exterminate the splendid 



