^ Rhinoceros-hunting 



It is strange to contrast the general disappearance of 

 big game in all other parts of the earth with their endless 

 profusion in those regions which the European has not 

 yet opened out. I feel that it sounds almost incredible 

 when I talk of having sighted hundreds of rhinoceroses 

 with my own eyes : incredible to the average man, I mean, 

 not to the student of such matters. Not until the mighty 

 animal has been exterminated will the facts of its existence 

 —in what numbers it throve, how it lived and how it 

 came to die — become known to the public through its 

 biographer. We have no time to trouble about the living 

 nowadays. 



For weeks I had not hunted a rhinoceros — I had had 

 enough of them. I had need of none but very powerful 

 specimens for my collection, and these were no more 

 to be met with every day than a really fine roebuck in 

 Germany. It is no mean achievement for the German 

 sportsman to bag a really valuable roebuck. There are 

 too many sportsmen competing for the prize — there must 

 be more than half a million of us in all ! 



It is the same with really fine specimens of the two- 

 horned bull-rhinoceros. It is curious, by the way, to note 

 that, as with so many other kinds of wild animals, the 

 cow-rhinoceros is furnished with longer and more striking- 

 looking horns than the bull, though the latter's are thicker 

 and stronger, and in this respect more imposing. The 

 length of the horns of a full-grown cow-rhinoceros in 

 East Africa is sometimes enormous — surpassed only by 

 those of the white rhinoceroses of the South, now 

 almost extinct. The British Museum contains specimens 



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