62 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



elephant, the largest of all the land mammals of 

 Africa. Standing as much as 6 feet 6 inches in 

 height at the withers, it measured in extreme length 

 fully 1 6 or 17 feet. It was almost purely a grass 

 feeder, and instead of having the prehensile upper 

 lip, so characteristic of the bush-feeding black rhino- 

 ceros, the white rhinoceros was distinguished by a 

 square blunt-lipped muzzle. The head was enor- 

 mously large and unwieldy-looking, with the small 

 eye set very far down towards the nostrils. The 

 fore-horn was always much longer, and therefore 

 much more prized by natives, than that of the 

 common rhinoceros. In the good days, sixty years 

 ago, when these beasts were common everywhere 

 between the Molopo river and the Zambesi, some 

 enormously long fore-horns were to be obtained as 

 trophies. Native chiefs had them pared down and 

 shaped into staffs and knobkerries, the finest of which 

 were highly treasured. The longest recorded measure- 

 ment of a white rhinoceros horn is 5 feet 1\ inches. 

 This magnificent specimen was brought to England 

 by the renowned hunter Roualeyn Gordon-Gumming, 

 and is now in the possession of Colonel W. Gordon- 

 Gumming. In colour the white rhinoceros varied 

 very little from the hue of the so-called black rhino- 

 ceros a kind of dirty, brownish drab. How the 

 animal came to get its name is difficult to understand. 

 Possibly some early Boer hunter may have come 

 across and slain one of these animals after it had 

 been rolling in light-coloured mud, and so christened 

 it forthwith Wit Rhinoster. Anyhow, the name was 



