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Show 728 MR. F. c. S E L O U S O N T H E [June /, which showed the greatest divergence of shape; and as a series of horns could be obtained showing every gradation of form between the extreme form of B. oswelli (which is bent forwards) to one so bent back as to describe half the arc of a circle, I do not think there are any adequate grounds for considering B. oswelli to be a true species. As regards the assertion that the horn of the ordinary Square-mouthed Rhinoceros never attains the length of those of B. oswelli, the longest horn I have ever seen was brought out by a trader named Reader, and is (or was a few years ago) in the possession of a gentleman residing in Hope Town, in the Cape colony. This horn measured 4 feet 6 inches, and had a very strong-curve backwards. Upon these grounds I consider B. oswelli to be a false species, and think that in future works upon natural history it ought to be omitted from the list of South-African Rhinoceroses. I now come to the Prehensile-lipped Rhinoceros {B. bicornis), of which I maintain that there is but one true species, in spite of whatever may be said by old Dutch hunters and natives to the contrary. This animal is still fairly numerous in many districts of South-eastern Africa, although, like its congener, the Square-mouthed Rhinoceros, it has been almost exterminated in the more westerly portions of the country. In 1879 there were still two or three drinking in the Upper Chobe, to the north-west of the Santa outlet. Between the Chobe and the Zambesi there are none; and according to the natives there never were any there, even when the Makololo first came into the country*; but directly the Zambesi has been crossed they are again found, and extend apparently through all Central Africa right up to Abyssinia. The Prehensile-lipped Rhinoceros lives exclusively upon bush and roots, eating not only the young leaves as they sprout from the end of a twig, but also chewing up a good deal of the twig itself. It is owing to the fact that this species lives upon bush that its range is very much more extended than that of the Square-mouthed Rhinoceros; for there are many large districts of country in the neighbourhood of the Zambesi to the eastward of the Victoria Falls covered almost entirely with an endless succession of rugged hills, almost devoid of grass, though well wooded, in all of which districts the Prehensile-lipped Rhinoceros is numerous, as it thrives well upon the scrubby bush with which the hill-sides and valleys are covered; whereas the square-mouthed species, though common in the forest-clad sandbelts and broad grassy valleys which always skirt the hills, is seldom or never found amongst the hills themselves, which is doubtless because the pasturage is too scanty to enable them to exist. The Prehensile-lipped Rhinoceros is usually represented as an animal of so morose and vicious a disposition* that it will almost invariably attack unprovoked any man or animal that it happens to meet; and I think that the general impression of people who are in the habit of reading books upon South-African sport, and have had no personal experience of the animals described, must be that this is the most dangerous animal to be met with in the country. |