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6 ZOOLOGICAL 
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
Bepartments : 
Mammals Aquarium 
W. T. Hornapay. C. H. TownsEnD. 
Birds Reptiles 
Lee S. CRANDALL. Raymonp L. Ditmars 
WituiaM Beere. Honorary Curator, Birds 
Published bi-monthly at the Office of the Society, 
111 Broadway, New York City. 
Yearly by Mail, $1.00. 
MAILED FREE TO MEMBERS. 
Copyright, 1920, by the New York Zoological Society. 
Each author is responsible for the scientific accuracy 
and the proof reading of his contribution. 
Etwrn R. Sansorn, Editor 
Vou. XXIII, No. 4 
JuLty 1920 
The distribution of the two spe- 
Habits cies of rhinoceroses, “black” 
= ect “e - ” pes 
Distribution and “white,” has been greatly 
influenced by certain peculiarities 
of structure, feeding, and other habits. The 
browsing black rhinoceroses strip leaves and 
twigs from bushes with the triangular, prehen- 
sile process of the upper lip, and are found in 
a great variety of places. Though the rolling 
portions of the savannah are preferred sites, 
they may live in forests, where I have seen them 
on the siopes of the Rift Valley and foothills 
of Mt. Kenia. Yet they also find a livelihood 
in really arid tracts where no white rhinocer- 
os could live, subsisting mainly on the xero- 
philous scrub, which, with its green, succulent 
aspect, seems to belie the general parched con- 
ditions vouched for by the many thorny ele- 
ments. They of course care little for wallow- 
ing places. 
The grazing white rhinoceroses feed on noth- 
ing but common grasses. Grassy plains and an 
abundance of pasture are an absolute necessity 
in their habitat. The horny edge of the lower 
lip (see photograph, p. 73), usually hidden by 
the overhanging snout, seems to have escaped 
the notice of all previous observers. As no 
incisors are present this ridge greatly facili- 
tates the cropping of fodder. The resulting 
muscular movement explains the characterist- 
ically great width and depth of the bony portion 
supporting the chin, which is slim and pointed 
in other rhinoceroses. The food is well masti- 
cated between the broad and flat grinding sur- 
faces of their molars, which contrast with the 
high, crushing ridges and sloping deep grooves 
of the relatively smaller teeth of their black 
relative. In these tropical regions the grasses 
favored lose their succulence soon after emerg- 
ing from the ground. Drinking water to aid 
digestion then becomes all important. Just 
SOCIETY BULLETIN 
about the time the last puddles dry up these 
white rhinoceroses find large sections of their 
haunts becoming arid. All wallowing places are 
then deserted, even the few connected with trick- 
ling springs that retain some moisture, and only 
in the rainy period do the huge beasts scatter 
again. 
The area of the former distribu- 
The tion of the white rhinoceros in 
ane South Africa (C. s. simum). as 
1ite . . 4 . 
Rhinoceros etermined from available infor- 
mation, hardly ever attained more 
than 800,000 square miles. Probably it was 
much less, as they inhabited chiefly the grassy 
regions between the middle Zambesi southward 
to the central section of the Orange River and 
Natal provinces. All localities of their actual 
occurrence fall within the range indicated on 
the map shown herewith. Damaraland, erron- 
eously attributed to Andersson and quoted by 
a few recent authors, has been excluded. His 
first white rhinoceros was killed just southwest 
of Lake Ngami, “at Kobis,” which, together with 
the more southern Kuruman, also in Bechuana- 
land, represents the easternmost limit of the 
species. No white rhinoceroses ever have been 
known west of, or in the Kalahari Desert proper. 
nor from the Drakensberg Range in the east. 
The range of the Nile-Congo race 
(C. s. cotton), a form discovered 
of as recently as 1900, was believed 
Noseern to be restricted to the Lado coun- 
try and the immediate neighbor- 
hood of the Nile. Contrary to all surmises its 
range has steadily increased. These white 
rhinoceroses are now positively known to extend 
from a little north of Lake Albert to three hun- 
dred miles down the Nile to a point near Shambe. 
From there it stretches four hundred and fifty 
miles westward to the Dar Fertit section, and 
two hundred south to Rafai.* The 
southern limit extends about five hundred miles 
across the northeastern Uele district to the ter- 
ritory northwest of Lake Albert. This habitat 
thus forms an oblong area of about 100,000 
square miles, all situated west of the Nile. 
which is the eastern limit of their dispersal. 
Southward their haunts reach to the forested 
and hilly transition belt just north of the West 
African Rain Forest, but in the north and west 
the boundaries can not be considered definite. 
They might ultimately be found along the grassy 
outskirts of the Sahara, just as in South Africa 
the southern form was at one time abundant 
about the edge of the Kalahari Desert, near 
Lake Ngami, and in eastern and_ southern 
Bechuanaland. In the west. one can point to 
* Schouteden, Rev. Zool. Afr., I, fasc. 1, 1911, p. 124. 
Range 
miles 
