THE WHITE 
OR SQUARE-MOUTHED RHINOCEROS 
RHINOCEROS SIMUS 
T HE white or square -mouthed rhinoceros was, within my own 
experience, an exceedingly common animal less than forty years 
ago in many parts of South Africa to the south of the Cunene and 
Zambesi rivers, but already at that date the species had been 
exterminated throughout all the south-western portions of its 
original range. I believe there is no authentic record of the 
occurrence of the white rhinoceros to the south of the Orange River, but in the 
early years of last century it was met with by Burchell and other travellers 
in Southern Bechuanaland not far to the north of that river. The emigrant 
Boers first encountered the white rhinoceros just north of the Vaal River on 
the open grassy downs, where the towns of Klerksdorp and Potchefstroom 
now stand, and I have had the actual spots pointed out to me by old Boer 
* 4 voortrekkers ’ ’ where they averred they had seen or shot individuals of this 
species, and I have no doubt that it was the circumstance that the first 
square -mouthed rhinoceroses seen by the Boer pioneers must undoubtedly 
have looked very white when seen standing sunning themselves in the early 
morning on these open grass plains, which gained for them the name of 
44 white ” rhinoceroses in contradistinction to the prehensile -lipped species 
which had been previously met with, and which, being a bush feeder, had 
always been seen amongst trees and bush, where it looked perhaps darker 
than it really was, and had already been named the 44 black ” rhinoceros. As 
a matter of fact, both species of African rhinoceroses — the square -mouthed 
and the prehensile-lipped — are of very much the same colour — a uniform 
dark grey. In 1836 Cornwallis Harris and Sir Andrew Smith found the 
white rhinoceros extraordinarily plentiful in the north-western districts 
of what is now the Transvaal State, and at that time it was doubtless 
almost equally plentiful from Zululand in the south-east to the Cunene 
River in the north-west, wherever the country was suitable to its existence. 
In those days these huge pachyderms were practically without enemies, 
for, with the exception of the small number which fell into native pitfalls, 
very few could have been killed, and before the advent of the European 
hunter with his death -dealing fire-arms, the species must have increased 
almost to the limit of its food supply. Within fifty years, however, of the 
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