WHITE RHINOCEROS 39 



type in the female of the Lado rhinoceros may eventually prove to be 

 another distinctive characteristic of that race. 



The following excellent account of the habits and distribution of 

 this species in South Africa is abbreviated and slightly modified from 

 one furnished by Mr. F. C. Selous : 



" In central and eastern South Africa the white rhinoceros 

 is unknown to the north of the Zambesi, as it is north of the 1 7th 

 parallel of south latitude in the more westerly portions of the country. 

 To the south of that line it was, however, abundant a century ago all 

 over South Africa north of the Orange river, except in waterless or 

 mountainous districts. In 1812 Dr. W. B. Burchell first met with this 

 species in the Batlapin district not far from the present mission-station 

 of Kuruman. Probably its range once extended even farther south, 

 although I doubt whether it was ever an inhabitant of the country 

 lying immediately north or south of the Orange river below its junction 

 with the Vaal, as those districts are very arid and produce little grass. 

 At any rate, all the rhinoceroses met with south of the Orange river 

 by the earlier South African travellers, including Burchell, seem to 

 have been of the black species. Whether the Boers when they first 

 entered the country now known as the Orange River Colony, in 1836, 

 met with the white rhinoceros is not definitely known, although they 

 probably did, as I have had places pointed out to me north of the 

 Vaal river, on the open grassy plains of the southern Transvaal, where 

 specimens were seen by the early Dutch pioneers ; and as the pasture 

 to the south is good, and the Vaal river fordable at many points 

 during the dry season, there is no reason why some individuals should 

 not have crossed at certain times of the year. In the north-west of 

 the Transvaal the white rhinoceros was very abundant, Sir Cornwallis 

 Harris mentioning that on one occasion in 1836, as he was travelling 

 through the Magaliesberg district, eighty were seen during the day's 

 march, while on his way from the Limpopo to a hill half a mile 

 distant no fewer than twenty-two were counted, of which, in self- 

 defence, four were killed. Harris also mentions that Sir Andrew Smith, 

 when travelling about the same time through the country some two 

 degrees north of Magaliesberg, encountered during a single day's march 

 with his bullock-waggons, without wandering any great distance on 

 cither side of the track, between 100 and 150 rhinoceroses, half of 

 which were probably of the present species. Between 1840 and 1850 

 travellers report having found the white rhinoceros abundant wherever 

 there was water to the north and west of the Limpopo between 

 Sechcli's country and Lake Ngami. Gordon Gumming saw ^ 



