July, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
379 
was very spatulate indeed and some 
inches longer than the front. Although 
the latter was of the broken, stumpy 
type it was of fair length and so the 
rear horn must have been of most ab- 
normal length. I saw this rhinoceros 
three or four times and observed her 
through glasses from considerably un- 
der a hundred yards distant. 
In the diagrams I have tried to illus- 
trate (1) a perfect horn, (2) the same 
horn broken off, (3) the same horn 
after going through the sharpening 
process. 
C. H. Stigand. 
NOTE ON THE ABOVE 
T HE editors of Forest and Stream, 
having previously heard of my ex- 
planation of the shape and growth 
of rhinoceros horns, have asked me to 
make an addition to Major Stigand’s in- 
teresting note. 
When in the northeastern Uel^ district 
during the Congo Expedition (1909- 
1915) I had the opportunity of seeing 
at least 150 sets of square-lipped rhin- 
oceros horns which Greek traders were 
exporting from the Belgian Congo. The 
American Museum now owns about 30 
sets selected from them. 
There can be little doubt that the 
shape of rhinoceros horns is as variable 
an individual character as the great dif- 
ferences in form and size would at once 
suggest. They are independent growths 
arising from two patches of skin as com- 
pact horn-like masses composed of ver- 
tical fibres. They may be straight, 
Photgraph by Herbert Lang. 
Square-lipped rhino with broken horn 
curved forward, or bent to the rear, in 
the latter case almost forming a semi- 
circle. Of course in young specimens 
they are of a rather regular conical 
type, whereas with advancing age the 
part immediately above the base is grad- 
ually worn away. Then the outstanding 
base becomes bristly and the increasing 
height accentuates the slenderness of the 
upper portion. The rear horn is gener- 
ally very much smaller than the front 
one, and is sometimes a mere bump. In 
rare cases there may be an additional 
horny excrescence either between or be- 
hind the two horns. 
The two largest specimens of white 
rhinoceros ever collected are those Mr. 
James P. Chapin and I obtained for the 
group now mounted in the American 
Museum of Natural History. Both of 
them have exceptionally large rear horns. 
The male has a 42-inch front and 22%- 
inch rear horn, and the female a 36 %- 
Photograph by Herbert Lang. 
Square-lipped rhino with perfect horns 
inch front and a 21%-inch rear horn. 
I have heard of front horns with knob- 
like expansion toward the tip but have 
never seen one and I observed the spatu- 
late feature only in rear horns. The 
broken horns that came to my notice 
were merely rounded off at the tip end. 
This, however, happens only in adult 
specimens with longer horns and I doubt 
whether the stumps left ever subsequent- 
ly change much in form. 
The horns of the cow rhinoceros are 
of course relatively more slender than 
those of the bull. This character is de- 
pendent on the narrower nasal bones to 
which the skin supporting the horns is 
attached. So far as the smoothing and 
sharpening of rhinoceros horns is con- 
cerned I do not think that it is essen- 
tially caused by rubbing them against 
stones and much less by digging. It is 
rather due to the indirect action of the 
heavy vegetation through which the 
animal moves with constantly nodding 
head. In some regions the greater wear 
may be traced to the effect of the razor- 
like blades of common grasses. The 
square-lipped species feeds only on grass. 
Occasionally after wallowing in mud it 
may rub its horn against the ground, 
but this performance is short in com- 
parison with the constant movement of 
the horns against the entangled brush 
of the habitat during the daily 15 to 20 
mile stroll. Herbert Lang. 
THE JACK CURLEW 
T HIS is a fine large bird, brown in 
color, with a long decurved bill. Its 
note, a series of whistles like those 
of the greater yellowleg, but lower 
pitched, less modulated and sometimes 
prolonged into a trill or rattle, can be 
confused with the note of no other bird. 
Though a far northern breeder, it is one 
of the first of its kind to reach us on 
the southward migration, often being 
present in small numbers by the fourth 
of July. The first birds are usually seen 
singly or two or three together. Later, 
in favored localities they may form flocks 
of considerable size. 
The jack curlew flies usually over the 
bay or meadows, but not infrequently 
along the ocean shore. Its flight is pe- 
culiarly steady and direct. If the gun- 
ner’s decoys are set directly in its path 
it will often descend to them, but it sel- 
dom swerves to right or left for the 
purpose of doing so. It associates very 
little with other shore birds. 
Several other curlews may occur rare- 
ly on our coast. The much larger sickle- 
bill with very large bill and yellower 
color is now very rarely seen, though 
formerly more numerous. The Euro- 
pean whimbrel and curlew, correspond- 
ing to our jack and sickle-bill in size 
but with white at the base of the tail, 
have straggled once or twice to this side 
of the Atlantic. In the past the Eskimo 
curlew, which after feeding on the tun- 
dra of Labrador, migrated south across 
the sea, sometimes occurred in consid- 
erable numbers. This is a bird resem- 
bling the jack curlew very closely but 
smaller, with a smaller, less curved bill. 
As the jack varies greatly as to size 
of bill, the best distinguishing mark 
between the two was the color of the 
under side of the flight-feathers, barred 
in the jack and plain in the Eskimo cur- 
lew. The latter bird is now very rare, 
approaching extinction. — J. T. N. 
THE TRAIL OF A SNAKE 
M ANY times along a dusty trail we 
see a wavy path about one-half 
inch wide going across the trail. 
This is a snake track, but the next ques- 
tion is, “Which way was he going?” If 
you observe closely you will find little 
mounds of dirt on the outside of the 
curve which are made by the movement 
of the snake’s body in pushing forward. 
In the accompanying diagram, snake 
> 
Diagram of snake track 
going in direction of arrow, crosses mark 
mounds of earth. These are always on 
the outside of the curve. Watch a snake 
sometime and he will prove it for you. 
This is just for general interest to the 
woodsman. An Old-Timer. 
TURTLE EGGS 
O N September 23, 1916, and Septem- 
ber 21, 1918, I had found young 
snapping turtles with shell one 
inch to one and one-eighth inch long at 
Mastic, Long Island, and had come to 
think of this as the season when eggs of 
this turtle were hatching in the locality. 
In the forenoon of June first, 1919, a 
snapping turtle was found laying her 
eggs in the edge of some plowed ground 
about forty yards from a creek. Off 
hand, it seemed that these eggs should 
hatch at an earlier date, but why not 
try and find out? In the afternoon, 
after the turtle was gone we dug down 
and unearthed 23 eggs, to keep them un- 
der observation. The more or less arti- 
( CONTINUE® ON PAGE 396) 
