33 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 6l 



Rowland Ward has recorded in his " Records of big game " (Lon- 

 don, 1910) a specimen of white rhinoceros obtained by Gen. B. T. 

 Mahon in the Egyptian Sudan. Upon further inquiry Rowland Ward 

 has informed me that this specimen was obtained in the Dar Fertit 

 country at the headwaters of the Bahr-el-Ghazal. This district 

 lies some 300 miles northwest of Lado Station and doubtless 

 represents another isolated locality where the species exists. The 

 Sudan specimen accredited by Rowland Ward to the late Prince 

 Paul Demidoff, in all probability also came from the Dar Fertit coun- 

 try, but no exact data concerning the specimen is available. The late 

 Boyd- Alexander, however, who explored the Yei #/ River country lying 

 between Dar Fertit and Lado does not mention the occurrence of 

 rhinoceroses in his account of the district. There is little doubt but 

 that the species is quite local in distribution, and to this very circum- 

 stance its long escape from discovery is to be attributed. Mr. F. C. 

 Selous, during his recent journey for giant eland in the Sudan, discov- 

 ered further evidence of the occurrence of the white rhinoceros north 

 of the Lado Enclave. While at Shambe on the Nile he was shown the 

 head of a specimen of white rhinoceros killed recently by an English 

 sportsman, about a day's journey west of the station. This record 

 carries the distribution 150 miles north of Kiro, the previously known 

 northernmost locality. During the past year Mr. Gilbert Blaine made 

 a shooting journey through the Bahr-el-Ghazal province from Wau 

 to Dem Zobeir. No rhinoceroses were met with in this journey, 

 although the spoor was occasionally seen. No specific identification 

 of the footprints was made, although it is here essential, as the black 

 species may also inhabit the region. He obtained good evidence, 

 however, at Bor on the Nile of the shooting of a white rhinoceros 

 some distance west of that station by a Sudan officer. Further explo- 

 ration of this little known region will without doubt show them to be 

 distributed well inland as far at least as the bases of the ranges mark- 

 ing the Congo-Nile watershed. Their haunts are the grassy veldt 

 which in this region is widespread, the forested region being confined 

 to the mountain summits. 



In South Africa they covered a wide range of country, practically 

 all of the territory between the upper Orange River and the Zambesi. 

 The southern limits were fixed by the Vaal River, the chief affluent of 

 the Orange. There are no reliable records of this species south of the 

 Vaal, but the bushmen there have tales of its occurrence, and there is 

 also the evidence of a recent skull found imbedded in one of the 

 river deposits in this section of South, Africa. 1 On the east coast it 



1 W. L. Sclater, Mammals of South Africa, London, 1900. Vol. I, p. 302. 



