THE BLACK 
OR PREHENSILE-LIPPED RHINOCEROS 
RHINOCEROS BICORNIS 
T HE black or prehensile -lipped rhinoceros was once an in- 
habitant of almost every part of Africa, south of Egypt, and 
the desert of Sahara, with the exception of the great equatorial 
forests to the westward of the Ruwenzori range of mountains 
and the open grass plains lying between the Orange and 
Limpopo rivers. It was first met with by the early Dutch 
settlers in the immediate vicinity of Cape Town, but was probably nowhere 
very numerous to the south of Zululand and the northern districts of the 
Transvaal. In 1836, when Cornwallis Harris and Sir Andrew Smith 
penetrated to the valley of the Upper Limpopo, they found black 
rhinoceroses extraordinarily plentiful. With the spread of European 
settlement, however, and the acquisition of fire-arms by the native tribes 
these animals grew ever scarcer and scarcer, and over vast areas of country 
to the south of the Zambesi they have long ceased to exist, and to-day there 
can only be a very few localities in this part of Africa where any still 
survive. To the north and north-east of Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia 
there may possibly still be a few in out-of-the-way places, such as the 
neighbourhood of the Lower Umsengaisi River; but, speaking generally, 
the black rhinoceros is either extinct or on the very verge of extinction 
almost everywhere in Africa to the south of the Zambesi. To the north of 
that river this species is widely distributed, but is nowhere found in any 
great abundance to the southward of the territories lying round the base 
of Mount Kilimanjaro. From that point, however, throughout British East 
Africa, right up to the Abyssinian frontier, these animals are still to be 
found in very large numbers. Indeed, in certain districts they are probably 
as plentiful to-day as they ever were in Harris’s time in the Northern 
Transvaal and the valley of the Limpopo. In Northern Nigeria the black 
rhinoceros does not seem to exist, except in the neighbourhood of Lake 
Chad and the valley of the Shari River. In South Africa this species was 
always a bush -loving animal, and did not often wander far into open 
plains, but in East Africa it is commonly met with in bare open country, 
far away from any trees or bush. In such localities, however, it will be 
found that the rhinoceroses feed on tiny little thorn bushes, which they 
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