The White Rhinoceros 59 



North-Eastern Mashunaland. But th.it twenty of these strange old-world 

 creatures are alive to-day I very much doubt, and in spite of game laws, 

 which may be more or less efficient in Zululand, but in the nature of 

 things must be entirely inoperative in an outlying district of Northern 

 Mashunaland, I cannot think that the species will survive very far into the 

 coming century. 



In habits white rhinoceroses were always of a rather sluggish dis- 

 position, spending the greater part of the day sleeping in some shady place, 

 either standing, or more usually lying down, in which latter position they 

 looked for all the world like enormous pigs. 



In the afternoon, as the sun got low and commenced to lose its heat, 

 they would wake up and begin to feed down to the water, and I have 

 so often seen them drinking just at sunset, both during the cool season and 

 in the hot weather which always precedes the commencement of the rainy 

 season, that I fancy it was their usual habit to drink before dark, when 

 they had no reason to think that they might be attacked at the water. In 

 South-Western Africa, where there are very few running rivers, and where 

 all the rhinoceroses which during the rainy season were scattered over an 

 enormous area of country were necessarily collected towards the end of the 

 dry season in great numbers round the few permanent springs, these animals 

 probably soon learned that it was unwise to drink until after dark, and even 

 then must have found it far from safe, as Andersson and Chapman speak of 

 having killed as many as eight of these animals — besides others that got 

 away wounded — at a water-hole in one night. The food of the white 

 rhinoceros was grass, and never, I believe, anything else, for I never 

 remember to have seen any sign in their dung of their having eaten any 

 kind of leaves or wild fruits, though the ground they used to frequent in 

 parts of Mashunaland was often thickly strewn with several kinds of 

 the latter, on which elephants, koodoos, and elands were fond of feeding. 

 Of all animals — with the exception, perhaps, of the elephant — the 



