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THE INDIAN RHINOCEROS, (Rhinoceros Indicus, Cuv.) IF the moderns are able to boast of a more extended knowledge of animated nature than was possessed by the ancients, it must be acknowledged that it is rather the result of their geographical discoveries, than of the zeal of their Governments or commercial Companies for its promotion. And it is humiliating to think that the nations, among which a pure love of science is most widely diffused, still should be debarred the contemplation of those rarer species of quadrupeds inhabiting the Old World, which in ancient Rome were repeatedly exhibited to gratify a tyrant's love of ostentation, Zool. Mag. No. 1.

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and a people's lust for the cruel combats and wholesale slaughter of the Amphitheatre.

The history of the remarkable quadruped with which the present work commences in some measure exemplifies this anomalous fact, and the rhinoceros is a still stronger proof of it. This quadruped, which is second in bulk to the elephant alone, is peculiar to the Old World; yet of the five or six distinct species which inhabit Africa and Asia, only one has been exhibited in modern Europe, and that at rare and distant intervals; while the knowledge of the rest has been chiefly acquired in our own times.

The first rhinoceros of which any mention is made in ancient history, was that which appeared at the celebrated festival of Ptolemæus Philadelphus, and which was made to march the last of all the strange animals exhibited at that epoch, as being apparently the most curious and rare. was brought from Ethiopia.

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The first which appeared in Europe graced the triumph and games of Pompey. Pliny states that this animal had but one horn, and that that number was the most common.

Augustus caused two to be slain, together with a hippopotamus, when he triumphed after the death of Cleopatra : and these, also, are described as having each but one horn.

Strabo very exactly describes a one-horned rhinoceros which he saw at Alexandria, and mentions the folds in its skin. But Pausanias gives a detailed account of the position of the two horns, on a species having that number, which he terms the Ethiopian Bull.

Of this latter kind two appeared at Rome under Domitian, and were engraved on some of the medals of that emperor; these occasioned some of the epigrams of Martial, which modern commentators, from ignorance of the species with two horns, found so much difficulty in comprehending.

The emperors Antoninus, Heliogabalus, and Gordian, severally exhibited the rhinoceros: and Cosmus expressly speaks of the Ethiopian species as having two horns: there is abundant evidence, therefore, that the ancients possessed a degree of knowledge respecting these animals, of which the moderns were for a long period destitute.

The first rhinoceros which was exhibited in Europe after the revival of literature, was a specimen of the one-horned species. It was sent from India to Emmanuel king of Portugal, in the year 1513. This sovereign made a present of it to the Pope; but the animal being seized during its passage with a fit of fury, occasioned the loss of the vessel in which it was transported. A second rhinoceros was brought to

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England in 1685: a third was exhibited over almost the whole of Europe in 1739; and a fourth, which was a female, in 1741. That exhibited in 1739 was described and figured by Parsons, in the Philosophical Transactions (vol. xlii. p. 583), who mentioned also that of 1685 and of 1741. A fifth specimen arrived at Versailles in 1771, and it died in 1793 at the age of twenty-five or twenty-six years. The sixth was a very young rhinoceros, which died in this country in the year 1800: some account of its anatomy was published by Mr. Thomas, in the Philosophical Transactions for that year. Lastly, a seventh specimen was living a few years ago in the Garden of Plants at Paris. All these specimens were one-horned, and all from India. So that the two-horned rhinoceros has never been brought alive to modern Europe, and it was long before even an accurate description of it was given by travellers; its existence was known only by specimens of the horns adhering to the skin of the head, which were preserved in different museums. As these specimens were from Africa, and as the first authentic accounts of the living animal of the two-horned species were derived from the histories of African travellers, a general notion prevailed that Asia afforded the one-horned species only, and that the two-horned kind was peculiar to Africa. However, in the year 1793, Mr. William Bell, a surgeon in the service of the East India Company, discovered a species of rhinoceros in the Island of Sumatra, which had also two horns, whose skin, like the African two'horned species, did not exhibit those folds which are so peculiar to the hide of the Indian rhinoceros. This species, however, differed from the African rhinoceros in possessing incisive or front teeth, which in the latter are wholly deficient. The Abyssinian traveller Bruce has given a vague indication of a two-horned rhinoceros, which exhibits the plaiting of the hide peculiar to the Indian species; and some naturalists have supposed it probable, from the form of the horns, that this may ultimately be found to be a true and distinct species. More recently, again, the accurate and scientific traveller Burchell has announced the existence in the interior of the southern promontory of Africa, of a rhinoceros double the size of the ordinary Cape species, which, like it, has also two horns, and a skin without hairs or folds, but which differs in having the lips and nose thickened, enlarged, and as if flattened.

Thus we find that two, if not three, distinct species of twohorned rhinoceros exist in Africa, and that another distinct species, similarly armed, is found in Sumatra. Lastly, we have to add a second species with one horn, discovered by

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Sir Stamford Raffles in Java, the smallest of all the living species, and quite distinct from the Indian one-horned rhi

noceros.

The characters which these several species possess in common, and which distinguish them from all other quadrupeds, are the following. Both sexes are armed with one or two horns, of an uniform fibrous texture, placed on the nose, and always situated on the middle line of the head. They have three toes on each foot, and each toe is inclosed in a thick rounded hoof. These, therefore, constitute the true generic character of the rhinoceros.

In their large size, bulky body, and thick legs, they resemble the elephant, have a hide even thicker than that animal, and are rendered further peculiar in some of the species by being thrown into deep and extensive folds. The surface of the skin is rough, and devoid of hair: the snout is elongated in some of the species, while in others it is remarkably blunted, and as if cut off: the eyes are very small, like those of the hog: the ears elongated, but much shorter than the head, and supported, as it were, on a sort of pedicle or stalk: the lips project beyond the mouth, and the upper one especially is very moveable: the tail is short, and its extremity bears a number of very stiff and large bristles set on at the sides, and projecting in two opposite directions. The number of nipples are two, and situated on the groin. Some species possess, while others are deficient in, incisive or front teeth; the canine teeth are wanting in all; the grinding or cheek teeth are seven in each jaw on each side.

It is our intention, in succeeding Numbers, to give the most accurate figures and accounts that can be obtained of the several species above indicated. In the present Number the one-horned species of India (Rhinoceros Indicus, Cuv.) will be described. As this is the only species which, in modern times, has been brought alive to Europe, it has been most commonly figured. A sketch was taken from the animal sent to Portugal in 1513, which was engraved by Albert Durer. This sketch, as it was improved and embellished by the celebrated painter of Nuremberg, came afterwards into the possession of Sir Hans Sloane; and to it was attached a German inscription, of which the following appears in the Philosophical Transactions for 1744, as a close translation.' "In the year 1513, upon the 1. day of May, there was brought to our king at Lisbon such a living beast from the East Indies that is called Rhinocerate: therefore, on account of its wonderfulness, I thought myself obliged to send you the representation of it. It hath the colour of a toad,

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and is close covered over with thick scales. It is in size like an elephant, but lower, and is the elephant's deadly enemy: it hath on the fore-part of its nose a strong sharp horn; and when this beast comes near the elephant to fight with him, he always first whets his horn upon the stones, and runs at the elephant with his head between his fore-legs; then rips up the elephant where he hath the thinnest skin, and so gores him. The elephant is terribly affraid of the Rhinocerate, for he gores him always wherever he meets an elephant, for he is well armed, and is very alert and nimble. This beast is called Rhinocero in Greek and Latin, but in Indian, Gomda."

The animal which was sent to England in 1739, is described by Dr. Parsons as being "very broad and thick. His head, in proportion, is very large, having the hinder part next his ears extremely high in proportion to the rest of his face, which is flat, and sinks down suddenly forward towards the middle, rising again to the horn, but in a lesser degree. The horn stands on the nose of the animal as upon a hill. I have seen the bones of the head of one of these in Sir Hans Sloane's museum; and the part on which the horn is fixed rises into a blunt cone, to answer to the cavity in the basis of the horn, which is very hard and solid, having no manner of hollow or core like those of other quadrupeds. That part that reaches from the fore part of the horn towards the upper lip may be called the nose, being very bulky, and having a kind of circular sweep downwards towards the nostrils: on all this part he has a great number of wrinkles running cross the front of it, and advancing on each side towards his eyes. The nostrils are situated very low, in the same direction with the opening of the mouth, and not above an inch from it. His under lip is like that of an ox, but the upper more like that of the horse, using it, as that creature does, to gather the hay from the rack, or grass from the ground; with this difference, that the rhinoceros has a power of stretching it out above six inches to a point, and doubling it round a stick or one's finger, holding it fast; so that as to that action, it is not unlike the proboscis of an elephant.

"As to the tongue of the rhinoceros, although it is confidently reported by authors that it is so rough as to be capable of rubbing a man's flesh from his bones, yet that of our present animal is soft, and as smooth as that of a calf; whether it may grow more rough as the beast grows older, we cannot say.

"His eyes are dull and sleepy, much like those of a hog in shape, and situated nearer the nose than that of any other

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