644 
AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 
or may not have its suspicions aroused when they fly away. 
If a party is seen on the wing, by watching their flight until 
they light it may be possible to discover the rhino. 
The hook-lipped rhino is dull of wit and eyesight. Its 
sense of smell is good, and so is its hearing; but its vision 
is astonishingly bad. We doubt if it sees better than a very 
near-sighted man. Again and again we have walked up to 
one, on an absolutely bare and level plain, to within a hun¬ 
dred yards without its paying the least heed. We wore 
dull-colored clothes, of course, and made no abrupt motions; 
but it was unnecessary to take advantage of cover until we 
were well within a hundred yards. In thick brush it is 
often difficult to approach, for all bush-dwellers are harder 
to approach than plains-dwellers, as they cannot be seen 
until within a distance so short that both their hearing and 
their smell have in all probability given them warning. 
But in all places, bush, forest, and open plain, it is the easiest 
to approach of all the creatures that dwell in that particu¬ 
lar habitat, because of the dulness of its brain-matter and 
the poorness of its vision. It is the most stupid of the very 
big creatures. It seems to have a marvellous memory for 
local geography, as is shown by the way it will traverse 
many miles of country to some remote water-hole in the mid¬ 
dle of a vast and monotonous plain; and it has the patience 
to stand motionless for many minutes listening for anything 
suspicious. But these seem to be well-nigh its only lines of 
mental effort. Its life is passed in feeding, travelling to and 
from water, sleeping, and when awake and at leisure either 
fidgeting, or much more often standing motionless to rest. 
There is occasional love-making and the exhibition of occa¬ 
sional fits of truculence and petulance or of muddled curi- 
