THE RHINOCEROS 253 



if so inclined, I believe one might kick them up. I have often 

 got to within 30 or 40 yards of one, have then failed to rouse 

 it by whistling and shouting, and have had to throw sticks, 

 stones, or bits of earth at it before it would get up. Should 

 the birds detect the stalker, however, they will fly up in the air 

 and give vent to a curious and prolonged shrill hissing note, 

 not unlike the call of our missel-thrush, and away the rhino- 

 ceros will go before the stalker can get within range. These 

 birds follow the rhinoceroses for the sake of the ticks which 

 are always plentiful on them. 



When alarmed, the rhinoceros becomes easily flurried, 

 appears to do things on impulse which other animals endowed 

 with more sagacity would not do, and is by no means the 

 vicious and vindictive brute which some writers have found him 

 to be in South Africa and the Soudan. In the majority of 

 cases, where a rhinoceros is said, by men who perhaps have 

 not been very well acquainted with his peculiarities, to have 

 charged in a most determined and vicious manner, I believe 

 this so-called charge to have been nothing more than the first 

 headlong and impetuous rush of the beast in a semi-dazed 

 state, endeavouring to avoid an encounter rather than court 

 one. 



In spite of the fact that buffaloes are generally con- 

 sidered the most dangerous of all big game, rhinoceroses 

 will test the nerve of a beginner more perhaps than any 

 other big beast. In the first place, ' rhinos ' are generally 

 found standing or lying down quite out in the open plain, 

 often under the shade of a small thorn tree, where there is 

 very little covert of any kind, except, perhaps, a few scanty 

 bushes and low ant-heaps (the majority of which would afford 

 little or no protection in the event of a charge), and grass 

 from 12 to 1 8 inches in height. Again, there is no know- 

 ing what ' rhinos ' will do when shot at and wounded, and 

 their behaviour is sometimes decidedly embarrassing, as they 

 will often spin round and round, and these gyrations, accom- 

 panied by violent snorting, are rather alarming until one gets 



