SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 45 
__ The borili eats bush alone, and the keitloa a mixed diet of 
4 I could never uriderstand the great power and strength of 
_ arhinoceros’ horn. It is sessile on the bone of the snout, but 
_ not part of, or attached to it ; apparently it is only kept in its 
_ place by the thickness of the skin, and yet, as I mention here- 
_ after, a white rhinoceros threw me and my horse clear up into 
_ theair. Of course, the enormous muscles of the neck bore 
_ the brunt of the lift, but the horn did not suffer in any way. 
__ It is quite intelligible that the fact of it not being cemented 
_ tothe bone would render it less liable to fracture at the base, 
and in itself it is tough enough, though consisting only of 
_ agglutinated hair ; but I am only wondering that, attached as 
it is, it should possess the necessary rigidity for the work it 
does. It is occasionally used in the most determined way by 
thinoceroses who have mutual differences to adjust. The 
Kafirs pare it down into hafts for their battle-axes. Of strips 
_ of the hide we made horse-whips, as the Egyptians do man- 
_ whips of that of the hippopotamus. 
__ For his bulk the rhinoceros, especially the borili, is a cam 
mover in a hard trot and sometimes a galiop. The whole tribe 
are heavies, taking their pleasure, if any, very sadly. The 
hippopotamus, an even more ungainly beast, has the decency 
to remain most of his time in the water, but the ‘chukuru’ 
thinks it behoves him to bask in the sunlight and parade his 
ugliness. Standing motionless is the routine of his life, a 
b now and then against a tree his dé/assement—a very 
solid, stolid brute ! 
These creatures appear to me to be out of time, to have 
belonged to a former state of things, and to have been forgotten 
sn the change was made. Often have I sat upon a ridge 
and looked at them as they moved solemnly and clumsily on 
the plain below, wondering how they still came to be in this 
world, and it has occurred to me how delightful it would have 
been to watch the pre-Adamite beasts in the same way, and 
learn their manners—which, I fear, were bad—as they came 
