ORDER PERISSODACTYLA : ODD-TOED UNGULATES 399 



indicated. Steinhardt estimated about one to every 12 km. along 

 the south bank of the Cunene, across which in southwestern Angola 

 they are more plentiful. Shortridge states that they are very rare 

 in Ovamboland, with none in the Namutoni Game Reserve. There 

 are still a few in the central Caprivi, but none in the eastern. In 

 Portuguese East Africa there are apparently a number of these 

 animals, and it is believed that from time to time they come over 

 the border into the sanctuary of Kruger National Park. In Northern 

 Rhodesia they appear to be restricted to the southern and eastern 

 parts, where, however, according to David Ross (in letter, 1936) they 

 are "being thinned out to the danger line." In Nyasaland they are 

 "very scarce in most districts, though still to be found in several of 

 the more remote parts of the country, such as in the Dowa and Kota- 

 kota districts. They are protected and but one may be obtained on a 

 visitor's full license or on a special license." (Wood, in Maydon, 

 1932, p. 315.) 



Proceeding northeastward from these localities, the Black Rhi- 

 noceros seems to have its present center of abundance in Tangan- 

 yika and especially in Kenya Colony. Up to 1920, at least, it was 

 considered "abundant in the northern districts, becomes scarcer in 

 Tabora, Kilimatinde and Handeni, and is present in small numbers 

 only in Mahenge, Malinyi, Mamanyere and Tunduru, apparently 

 becoming abundant south of the railway only at Ifakara" (Jour. 

 Soc. Preservation Fauna Empire, pt. 2, p. 47, 1922). In Kenya 

 Colony, C. W. Hobley writes (in August, 1936) that in the past 20 

 years the rhino population has greatly decreased and is at present 

 probably only 20 percent of what it then was. "If, however, the 

 permanency of the great reserves is assured, the perpetuation of 

 the species is certain." From the report of the Kenya Game Depart- 

 ment for 1926, it appears that along the edge of the forest, these 

 rhinos became so numerous that at the request of the local inhabi- 

 tants the department undertook to reduce the number of the animals 

 in the Nyeri district "where they had for some time been a source of 

 danger and annoyance." Twenty-eight were thus killed. A later 

 report (in East Africa, June 8, 1933) tells that "Mr. J. A. Hunter, 

 the Kenya white hunter, recently shot eleven rhino near Nyeri in 

 three days." Such measures will inevitably reduce the animals 

 considerably but they may be needed in areas under settlement. 

 This condition of affairs was foreseen by the Swedish naturalist 

 Lonnberg, who wrote in 1912: "In settled districts and such with a 

 lively traffic, rhinoceroses may be a troublesome nuisance, especially 

 if they are numerous. But there are vast stretches of land in British 

 East Africa, as well dry steppe as arid thornbush country, which can 

 never produce any kind of crops, and where at most nomadic tribes 

 may be able to feed their flocks. There the rhinoceroses can do no 



