The White Rh 



inoceros 



it was very rare for a white rhinoceros to give birth to two calves at a 

 time. This particular cow I shot, and we had a lot of trouble to drive her 

 big calves away. They did not attempt to charge, but kept trotting round 

 and hanging about all the time we were cutting up their mother's carcase, 

 and though, when sticks were thrown at them, they often moved away 

 out of sight, they always came back again. They had long been 

 weaned, and were quite able to take care of themselves. When, how- 

 ever, a white rhinoceros calf was very small it was almost impossible 

 to drive it away from its mother's carcase, and it would charge most 

 viciously at anything that approached it, just as a very young elephant 

 will do. 



Speaking of the young calf which he caught alive in 1892, Mr. R. T. 

 Coryndon wrote, "When its mother fell, the little calf at once swung round, 

 with ears cocked, charging viciously at anybody coming within 10 yards of 

 the carcase, after every charge returning to the mother and whining for 

 all the world like a fox-terrier pup, though rather louder. As the old 

 cow took no notice of his movements, he put his nose under her and, 

 apparently with the greatest ease, shook the enormous mass of flesh and 

 bones, as if it had been a framework covered with canvas." After Mr. 

 Coryndon had secured this calf he remarked that, " as it lay on the ground 

 struggling hard it began to sweat freely, the moisture dripping off it as 

 though a bucket of water had been thrown over it." 



I once recorded a very similar fact concerning a very young black 

 rhinoceros calf, 1 and this profuse perspiration from the backs of young 

 African rhinoceroses is the more remarkable because I have never seen any 

 sign of sweating in an adult either of the black or the white species. In 

 colour the so-called white rhinoceros was a neutral gray. It is true that 

 when standing in open ground on a winter morning, with the sun shining 

 full upon them, they looked very white, and as the Boers must first have 



1 Sec A llunur? /r„v/,/W7//i;/, page 361. 



