398 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



who spent some few weeks at the Cape at the same time (1685) , and 

 Kolben who wrote about fifty years later" give descriptions of it. 

 In those days widespread over the whole of South Africa, it was 

 still common along the south coast of the Colony in 1700. The last 

 one in the Cape region was said to have been killed in 1853, on the 

 Coega River, close to Port Elizabeth, while in the Orange Free State 

 the last one killed is said to have been in 1842, a decade earlier, in the 

 Kroonstad district. In the 1840's rhinos were still rather common in 

 Bechuanaland, "but now they are extinct both there and probably 

 also in Rhodesia." (W. L. Sclater, 1900.) In 1900, according to 

 Sclater, their last haunts south of the Zambesi were "Zululand, the 

 Lydenburg district (where a few are preserved) , the Beira-Zambesi 

 country and perhaps Ovampoland." 



Kirby (in Bryden, 1899, pp. 38-40) wrote at the end of the last 

 century that "a few years ago rhino were far more widely distributed 

 throughout central South Africa than at present. There are probably 

 not a dozen left in even the remotest corners of the northeastern 

 Transvaal, where once they abounded ; two or three in the Matamiri 

 bush, and a few in the Libombo range near Oliphant's River repre- 

 sent all. In the rough broken country south of the Zambesi and east 

 of the Falls, in parts of ... Portuguese East Africa they are still 

 fairly numerous, and there are a few in Matabeleland, Mashona- 

 land, and Amatongaland." This statement is apparently more or 

 less near the truth at the present day, nearly forty years later. At 

 all events, in the annual report as to conditions in what is now 

 Kruger National Park, the Game Ranger states in 1925 as follows: 

 "A few of the species exist in the neighbourhood of the Shingwedsi 

 River. I was long under the impression that no survivors now 

 existed south of the Olifants River; but during the past year, I 

 personally came on fresh tracks of a single animal in the Sabi Bush, 

 and it is therefore fairly certain that the dense covert in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the Matumiru Spruit, still holds several of the species. 

 The rhinoceros is a type fast disappearing from even the best game 

 countries of Africa today, and in view of its slow breeding nature, 

 exceptional efforts should be made to preserve it from extinction. 

 Fortunately it has no natural enemies." The most recent report 

 available, 1934, gives as an estimate of the numbers in eastern South 

 Africa, "a few" in the Umfolosi Reserve, approximately 85 in the 

 Hluhluwe Reserve, and a few in the Mkuzi Reserve, Natal. The 

 number in Kruger Park in 1932 was believed to be "under half a 

 dozen." In western South-West Africa a small remnant still exists. 

 In the Kaokoveld, according to Shortridge (1934), between the 

 lower Ugab River and the Cunene there may be still between 40 

 and 80 rhinoceros, but "in 1923 Manning estimated that, at most, 

 there were 50 in the entire territory," so that a slight increase may be 



