ELEPHANT, TAPIR, HYRAX, RHINOCEROS 163 
CI Nee SA 
Photo by C, B. Hausburg. Esy, 
BLACK AFRICAN RHINOCEROSES 
A splendid snapshot of two black African rhinoceroses taken on the open veldt. They were afterwards shot by the party 
white rhinoceros has never been encountered by any other traveler in Central Africa seems to 
show that the animal is either very rare in those districts, or that it has an exceedingly limited range. 
In the early years of the nineteenth century the square-mouthed or white rhinoceros was 
found in large numbers over the whole of South Africa from the Orange River to the Zambesi, 
except in the waterless portions of the Kalahari Desert, or those parts of the country which are 
covered with rugged stony hills or dense jungle. 
Speaking of his journey in 1837 through the western part of what is now the Transvaal 
Colony, Captain (afterwards Sir) Cornwallis Harris wrote: “ On our way from the waggons to a 
hill not half a mile distant, we counted no less than twenty-two of the white species of rhinoceros, 
and were compelled in self-defense to slaughter four. On one occasion I was besieged in a bush 
by three at once, and had no little difficulty in beating off the assailants.” Even so lately as 
thirty years ago the white rhinoceros was still to be met with in fair numbers in Ovampoland and 
other districts of Western South Africa, whilst 
it was quite plentiful in all the uninhabited 
parts of Eastern South Africa from Zululand 
to the Zambesi. In 1872 and 1873, whilst 
elephant-hunting in the uninhabited parts of 
Matabililand, I encountered white rhinoceroses 
almost daily, and often saw several in one day. 
At the present time, however, unless it should 
prove to be numerous in some as yet unex- 
plored districts of North Central Africa, this 
strange and interesting animal must be counted 
one of the rarest of existing mammals, and in 
Southern Africa I fear it must soon become 
extinct. A few still exist amongst the wild 
loquat groves of Northern Mashonaland, and Photo by C. B. Haushurg, Esq. 
there are also a few surviving in Zululand ; but ONE OF THESAME RHINOCEROSES DEAD 
I fear that even with the most r igid protection _ This picture gives some idea of the size of the commonest surviving species 
