68 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



It is probable that a very large proportion of African 

 rhinoceros horns are exported to China, where, ground 

 up into powder, they are eagerly purchased as 

 medicine for various ailments. 



The black rhinoceros spends its day very much 

 as did its white congener, and has much the same 

 characteristics. It sleeps during the hot hours, 

 usually in thick bush or beneath a spreading tree, 

 but occasionally in the full blaze of the sun, upon an 

 open plain, with its head pointing down-wind. Wak- 

 ing towards afternoon, it feeds to its watering-place ; 

 after drinking, between 6 and 10 p.m., it browses 

 away again to its feeding - grounds till about 9 

 o'clock a.m., when it seeks repose. Its hearing and 

 smell are acute, but its sight is extremely poor, so 

 poor that it will pass a man within a score of yards 

 without apparently making him out at all. As its 

 prehensile upper lip indicates, it browses chiefly 

 among bush, plucking its sustenance from various 

 astringent shrubs and the foliage of the various bush 

 acacias. It devours, too, certain plants that grow 

 upon the great grass plains. It has a most singular 

 habit of depositing its dung in a hollow which it 

 scoops out for the purpose, but scatters it about 

 thereafter with its horn and nose, ploughing up deep 

 furrows as it does so. The white rhinoceros never 

 seems to have indulged in this practice. The black 

 rhinoceros lies with its back to the wind and, so soon 

 as it gets a whiff of anything that it deems suspicious, 

 sets off at a sharp trot. When charging, or making 

 off at its best pace, it runs at a clumsy, bounding 



