WHITE RHINOCEROS 117 



it was supposed that the sole survivors of the species were a few in a corner of 

 north-east Mashonaland, from among which were procured the specimens now in 

 the British Museum and the Museum at Tring. In 1894 naturalists were, however, 

 delighted to hear that a few of these huge pachyderms still lingered in the tsetse- 

 haunted jungles of Zululand between the Black and the White Umvolosi Rivers; 

 but there is considerable doubt whether, in spite of legislative protection, it will 

 be possible to preserve the race in this area ; and the existence of a representative 

 of the species in the north is a source of satisfaction to all who view with regret 

 the disappearance of the great beasts of the earth. The skull of the white rhino- 

 ceros differs in several structural details from that of its black cousin. The most 

 important of these differences is displayed by the cheek-teeth, which have much 

 taller and more complicated crowns than those of the other species. Moreover, 

 in the black rhinoceros the teeth are worn into alternate ridges and hollows, but 

 in the white species they wear into a uniformly flat plane. Evidently this differ- 

 ence is connected with the food of the two animals ; and it is now known that 

 while the black species browses on twigs and leaves, its white cousin subsists solely 

 by grazing. Consequently, it is only on open grassy plains that the latter magnifi- 

 cent animal is to be met with. Why it was called by the Boers the white rhinoceros 

 (whit rhinaster) is a matter difficult to understand. 



Reasons have recently been given by a French naturalist for regarding the 

 white rhinoceros of the Lado Enclave and the Bahr-el-Ghazal as the original of the 

 unicorn, or licorn, of the ancients. In 1848 M. Fresnel, then French Consul at 

 Jedda, addressed a letter to the Paris Academy relative to the existence in the 

 southern Sudan of a single-horned rhinoceros. This rhinoceros was known to the 

 Arabs under the name of abou-karu (the possessor of one horn), as distinct from the 

 black rhinoceros, which they call khertit. The abou-karu was stated by Fresnel 

 to inhabit the south of Wadai, the region to the south-west of Darfur, and to the 

 east of Lake Chad, which is the habitat of R. s. cottoni. The Arabs in Fresnel's 

 time had not, however, apparently seen the animal in the flesh, but were acquainted 

 with it merely by the long front horns, which were carried north as articles of 

 commerce. Going back still earlier, we find Diodorus Siculus, a contemporary of 

 Julius Csesar, alluding to a rhinoceros from Ethiopia which carried on the tip of 

 its nose a single flattened horn, almost as hard as iron. This description accords 

 with the one given by the Arabs of Hedjaz to Fresnel in 1848, and indicates the 

 same animal. In this connection it is important to bear in mind that in ancient 

 times, and even during the Middle Ages, the horn of the unicorn was believed to 

 serve as a defence against poison, and was for that purpose carved into cups. When 

 a poisonous draught was poured into such a cup the liquor was supposed to effervesce, 

 as is still believed to be the case in China, where rhinoceros-horn cups are used. 

 This puts the oryx and the narwhal out of court as claimants to being the true 

 unicorn, for one might as well try to drink out of a sword-scabbard as from an 

 oryx-horn or a hollowed-out narwhal tusk. The rhinoceros-horn cups used by 

 the Chinese as poison-detectors are generally carved and mounted on metal stands. 

 Although it cannot be affirmed that the case is proved, yet the foregoing arguments 

 in favour of regarding the Lado white rhinoceros as the unicorn of the ancients 

 seem difficult to refute. The history of white rhinoceroses does not, however, end 



