The White Rhinoceros in Zululand 
i) 
to 
lor) 
Preservation. 
It has already been shown that at one time the white rhinoceros 
ranged over an enormons tract of country in South and South Central 
Africa, wherever extensive grass-lands were to be found to supply its 
natural food in sufticient abundance. 3ut writing as far back as 
1894, before its existence was ascertained in the Nile region, Mr. R. 
T. Coryndon, when recording that the subject of the extinction of this 
species had a ‘melancholy interest” for him, gave it as his opinion 
that ‘long before the close of this (the 19th century) the white 
rhinoceros will have vanished from the face of the earth.”* There can 
be no question that but for the discovery of its existence in the north, 
and the wise forethought of successive Natal Governments in prohibit- 
ing its slaughter in the south, these fears would have been confirmed. 
No praise therefore can be too great to accord to former Natal 
Governments, and since Union, the Provincial Administrations, for 
their action in saving this interesting creature from destruction ; and 
all true lovers of Nature owe them a vast debt of gratitude for the 
fact that so far as this little corner of South Africa is concerned, Mr. 
Coryndon’s melancholy prophecy failed of fulfilment. 
General Description and External Characteristics. 
Rhinoceros sumus, the species under consideration, has had no less 
than five different names applied to it, viz.: Burchell’s, the Square- 
lipped, the Square-mouthed, the Square-nosed, and the White 
Rhinoceros. The first of these is for many reasons unsatisfactory, and 
though either one of the next three is the most accurately descriptive, 
yet the terms are clumsy to a degree, and the writer has therefore 
adopted the inaccurate, but far better known appellation of White 
Rhinoceros. 
It is the largest of the group, and is well differentiated from the 
other African species—the Black Rhinoceros, Rhinoceros bicornis—in 
the structure of the mouth, the upper lip of the former being square 
and bluntly truncated, whereas in dicornis the upper lip is more or 
less pointed, elongated, and highly prehensile. 
The head of the white rhinoceros is immense ; its great length being 
due to the remarkable occipital projection of the skull. 
The eye is placed behind the posterior horn, while in the black 
species it is immediately below it. 
* Proceedings of the Zoological Society, London, 1894, p. 329, 
