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The White Rhinoceros in Zululand 
Geographical Distribution. 
At the present time Zululand is the only portion of the Sub-continent 
in which the white rhinoceros, is known to exist, as I understand it is 
now entirely extinct in Rhodesia, its one time favourite haunt. 
Prior to 1900 it was not known with certainty to occur anywhere 
north of the Zambezi River, but in that year Major A. H. Gibbons 
found a skull in the Lado Enclave, on the west bank of the Nile, 
where he consequently procured a complete specimen. Other sports- 
men have shot it there since, although there is insufficient evidence 
that its range in that portion of the Continent is other than very 
restricted. It appears to be confined to a comparatively narrow tract 
along the left bank of the Upper Nile, in the Bahr-el-Ghazal province. 
In this area and in Zululand are to be found the only living specimens 
in the world of this gigantic quadruped. 
It may be pointed out that, on account of a slight difference in the 
dorsal outline of the skull and somewhat smaller teeth, the Nile 
representatives have been separated as a sub-species from the typical 
southern form, under the name Rhinoceros simus cottoni, Lydekker. 
At one time the species ranged over a vast tract of country in South 
Africa, from the Vaal River to the Zambesi, and there is not wanting 
evidence that it once ranged far south of even the Vaal River, while 
to the west it extended into Damaraland. On the east coast it 
occurred from Zululand up to the Zambesi, above where the Shire 
River enters the latter from the north, and in 1904 the writer found 
two incomplete skulls near that spot, in the Mwanza Bush. 
In the north the species appears to be very local in distribution, and 
there is little doubt that this was also the case in South Africa, even 
in the days when it was plentiful. 
More remarkable, however, is the discontinuity in its distribution, 
as shown by the fact that no trace of the animal has ever been found 
between the Zambesi River and its present range in the Nile region, 
a distance of well over one thousand miles. Heller has pointed out 
that the separation between the two forms has doubtless taken place 
“fairly recently,” because sufficient time has not elapsed ‘for the 
development of specific differences in the individuals inhabiting such 
widely separated localities.” But how or when such separation 
happened, and the vast tract of country lying between the Zambesi 
and the Blue Nile lost its white rhinoceroses, there is no evidence 
to show. It seems probable that one may be misled by the absence 
of specific differences into supposing that the separation took place 
