654 
AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 
covering of the ears is much shorter than that of the tail, 
being inches in length and confined to the terminal 
third on the extreme edge of the ear-conch. The eyebrows 
are armed by a few stiff black hairs, but they are quite in¬ 
conspicuous in such a colossal animal. This scanty hair 
covering is black except occasionally at the tips where it 
fades to brownish. The skin is quite smooth, the only 
definite folds being a transverse one on the foreleg above 
the knee and another across the nape immediately behind 
the ears. This latter fold, however, disappears when the 
head is lowered in feeding. Besides these large folds, the 
sides of the body are streaked by narrow, rib-like folds, a 
peculiarity not found on other rhinoceroses. These folds, 
however, are quite independent of the ribs, although they 
show a similar arrangement and direction. The calves 
are marked by these peculiar rib-like folds quite as dis¬ 
tinctly as the adults. 
The black rhinoceros is very little inferior in size to 
either the white or the single-horned Indian species, but is 
somewhat different in body shape from both. From the 
white it may be distinguished, aside from the shorter head, 
by its slightly longer body and the absence of the fleshy 
hump on the nape. The great Indian rhinoceros is at 
once distinguishable from it by its folded skin, which has 
the appearance of plates of armor, and by its shorter legs. 
The largest specimen in bulk of body in the National 
Museum is an old male from the Loita Plains, British East 
Africa, shot by Colonel Roosevelt. This one measured, in 
the flesh: 12 feet 3 inches in length of head and body, 
measured along the contour of the back; tail, 30 inches; 
hind foot, from the hock to the tip of the middle hoof, 17 }4 
inches; ear length from notch, 9 % inches; standing height 
at the withers, 4 feet 9 inches. The greatest length of the 
skull of this specimen is 23L2 inches, measured from the tip 
of the nasal boss to the end of the occipital crests. The 
largest female is also a specimen from the Loita Plains shot 
by Colonel Roosevelt. She is but little less in size than the 
male and exceeded him in the height dimension; but this 
superiority in height is doubtless due to some error in 
taking the measurement rather than to an actual differ¬ 
ence, as the skull and length of the specimen are both less 
