5 8 Great and Small Game of Africa 



to transport them to Salisbury. In 1893, however, Mr. Coryndon having 

 been commissioned by Mr. Walter Rothschild to obtain the complete skin 

 and skeleton of a white rhinoceros for the Tring Museum, set out once 

 more for the same part of the country where he had met with these 

 animals the preceding year, accompanied by a large staff of native carriers. 

 He was fortunate enough to come upon two bulls consorting together, and 

 he shot and preserved the skins and skeletons of both. One of these two 

 specimens is mounted in the Mammalia Gallery of the Natural History 

 Museum at South Kensington, and the other is in the Tring Museum. 

 In 1895 Mr. Arthur Eyre obtained yet another white rhinoceros bull in 

 the same district of Northern Mashunaland. This fine specimen was 

 bought by Mr. Cecil Rhodes and presented by him to the South African 

 Museum at Cape Town. 



Although it has always been known that a few white rhinoceroses still 

 survived in a certain district of Northern Mashunaland, I think it was 

 generally believed that by 1890 this species had become extinct in every 

 other part of South Africa. In 1 894, however, a few of these animals 

 were discovered to be still surviving in a corner of Zululand, and it is said 

 that six of them were shot there during that year. Of these, two fell to 

 the rifle of the late Mr. C. R. Varndell, the skin and skeleton of one of 

 which (a bull) was preserved, and has since been bought by Mr. Carl Jeppe, 

 and presented to the Natural History Museum at Pretoria. Thus it will be 

 seen that the great square-mouthed rhinoceros, the largest of terrestrial 

 mammals after the elephant, which, sixty years ago, was excessively 

 common over an enormous area of country in Southern Africa to the south 

 of 17 of south latitude, and which, even so lately as thirty years ago, 

 was still very plentiful throughout many large districts of that vast country, 

 is now on the very verge of extinction. A few, a very few, still survive 

 in one small district of Zululand, whilst perhaps a dozen others yet wander 

 over the Mahobohobo forests between the Angwa and Manyami Rivers in 



