- THE RHINOCEROS 253 
if so inclined, I believe one might kick them up. I have often 
got to within 30 or 4o 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. Shouid. 
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 18 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 
