164 MAMMALS

According to Mr. F. C. Selous, ‘Twenty years
ago this animal seems to have been very plentiful
in the western half of South Africa; now, unless
it is still to be found between the Okavango and
Cunene rivers, it must almost be extinct in that portion
of the country. And this is not to be wondered at
when one reads the accounts in Andersson’s and
Chapman’s books of their shooting as many as eight
of these animals in one night as they were drinking
at a small water-hole ; for it must be remembered that
these isolated water-holes at the end of the dry season
represented all the water to be found over an enormous
extent of country, and that therefore all the rhinocer-
oses that in happier times were distributed over many
hundreds of square miles were in times of drought
dependent upon perhaps a-single pool for their supply
‘of water. In 1877, during several months’ hunting in
the country to the south of Linyanti on the river
Chobi, I only saw the spoor of two square-mouthed
rhinoceroses, though in 1874 I had found them fairly
plentiful in the same district ; whilst in 1879, during
eight months spent in hunting on and between the
Botletli, Mababe, Machabe, Sunta, and Upper Chobi
rivers, I never even saw the spoor of one of these
animals, and all the Bushmen I met with said they
were finished,’

But a few are probably still living in Mashona-
land, and last year two were shot by Mr. Coryn-
don, one of which is at South Kensington and the
other at Tring. The common African rhinoceros is
the black one with the prehensile lip, R. dzcornzs, in
which the horns will sometimes reach forty inches,