In height adult males of the Sumatran species stand on the average from 4 feet to 4½ feet at the shoulder, and females sometimes not more than 3 feet 8 inches.
Like the Javan rhinoceros, the Sumatran species is by preference an inhabitant of hilly, forest-covered country, and browses on the leaves and shoots of trees and bushes. It is a timid and inoffensive animal, soon becoming tame in captivity. Its flesh is said to be much appreciated by the Dyaks of Borneo; and as its horns are of value for export to China, where they are used for medicinal purposes, it has of late years very much decreased in numbers in the province of Sarawak, but is more plentiful in Central and North Borneo. Living as it does in dense jungle, it is an animal which is seldom seen by European sportsmen, and its habits in a wild state have never been yet very closely studied.
Turning to the two species of rhinoceros which inhabit the continent of Africa, both are double-horned, and neither furnished with incisor teeth, the nasal bones being thick, rounded, and truncated in front. Both, too, are smooth-skinned and entirely hairless, except on the edge of the ears and extremity of the tail, which are fringed or tufted.
Of the two African species, the White or Square-mouthed Rhinoceros is the larger and the rarer. Until quite recently the range of this huge ungainly-looking animal, the biggest of all terrestrial mammals after the elephant, was supposed to be entirely confined to the southern portions of the African Continent; for although from time to time horns had found their way to Zanzibar which seemed referable to the square-mouthed rhinoceros, the fact of the existence of the white rhinoceros in any part of Africa north of the Zambesi remained in doubt until a female was shot in the year 1900, in the neighbourhood of Lado, on the Upper Nile, by Captain A. St. H. Gibbons, who brought its skin, skull, and horns to England. The fact, however, that the white rhinoceros has never been encountered by any other traveller in Central Africa seems to show that the animal is either very rare in those districts, or that it has an exceedingly limited range.
Photo by C. B. Hausburg, Esq.
BLACK AFRICAN RHINOCEROSES.
A splendid snapshot of two black African rhinoceroses taken on the open veldt. They were afterwards shot by the party.
Photo by C. B. Hausburg, Esq.