by I. Vaughan-Nirby. 239 
The white rhinoceros shares with the elephant a perfectly marvellous 
adaptibility for getting away, even in the densest cover, with almost 
uncanny silence. The writer recollects upon one occasion getting up 
to about 20 yards from the nearest of a little troop of a dozen or 15 
elephants in thick cover. They stood with uplifted trunks “feeling 
for the wind,” three or four of them offering quite easy shots if only 
it had been possible to see their tusks. Having already secured three 
from the main herd to which this little troop had belonged it was 
desired to kill only the best animal of these, but all the creeping and 
dodging about failed to discover the one which was wanted. Chancing 
to take my eyes off them for an instant, upon looking up again they 
had vanished, gone like morning mists, and as silently, all those huge 
creatures had passed out of sight without the slightest sound. And 
the white rhinoceros is equally adept at performing this vanishing trick. 
When approached from below wind in more open country, it will 
probably be found standing with lowered head, its nose almost resting 
on the ground, but occasionally it will be raised, and turned un- 
certainly from side to side, not with the nervous jerky action peculiar 
to the black species, but in a poncerously deliberate manner. | When 
satisfied that danger threatens, the animal wheels round and makes off 
at a swinging trot, its tail screwed tightly above its back. It usually 
goes a couple of hundred yards or so up wind, twisting and turning in 
and out amongst the bushes very smartly, and then generally pulls up, 
standing with its head in the direction previously taken, and, if 
followed up, will repeat the performance, till finally when his dull 
senses assure him that he is being persistently followed, he will break 
away at a sharp gallop for a hundred yards, then slowing down to its 
normal trot, will not halt again until it has put many a mile between 
itself and the object of its alarm. 
The white rhinoceros is very much less active than the black, and 
more deliberate and heavy in every movement, the only action which 
it appears to perform smartly is that of getting on its feet from a lying 
down position, and it is really wonderful how quickly that is done. 
The writer has never met with these animals high up on rocky hills, 
such as the black loves to clamber about upon, nevertheless, when put 
to it, they can negotiate uncommonly steep and rocky places with 
agility. They travel about amongst the foot-hills, however, here and 
there ploughing up long furrows with their horn as they walk along. 
The habitats of the two species do not overlap, or at least not to 
any extent. In one spot only have I met with the dung of the black 
species within the range of the white’s habitat, and upon another 
