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White Rhinoceros Horns
White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum), British East Africa, shot by J Gardiner Muir 1893, taxidermy horn, lower horn 56cm, upper horn 33.5cm, on an oak shield with brass plaque with inscription (as above), vestiges of taxidermy label on reverse.
J Gardiner Muir had a less than glorious reputation in th world of hunting. John M MacKenzie in his pioneering work The Empire of Nature (pg.56) mentions an immense slaughter of game by a road making party under Captain Bernard Slater. He described his team as "all first-rate shots, and they were all mounted; their combined bag of game, if a record had been kept, would have been little less than staggering; their slaughter of rhinoceroses alone in the open thorn-bush country between Sultan Hamud and Machakos Road was only equalled by that of a man named Gardiner Muir and his Scots ghillie, who between them killed over 80 around about Machakos in 1893 in less than 3 months". Gardiner Muir, incidentally, so incensed the company by advertising his feats against the rhino that it lead to the introduction of the first game regulations. This is almost certainly one of the trophies taken by him in that place at that time.
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