ing herself in a theatre, she immediately, without any direction from her keeper, began to rehearse the scenes which she had previously performed at Paris. Pliny, however, tells us, that an elephant, having been punished for his inaptitude in executing some feat which he was required to learn, was observed at night endeavouring to practise what he had vainly attempted in the day;-and Plutarch confirms this, by mentioning an elephant who practised his theatrical attitudes, alone, by moonlight. The power of foregoing a present good, and still more, the resolution of submitting to a present evil for the sake of a future advantage, is surely an effort of reason, and marks the calculation and prudence of a reflective nature; but though men themselves often fail to show it, it is not unfrequently evinced by some of the inferior animals. We are told in the Asiatic Researches' of an elephant that was in the habit of voluntarily going every morning to the military hospital at Calcutta, for the cure of an extensive ulcer on its back, and though it had to suffer severe pain from the powerful caustics that it was requisite to apply to the sore, yet it continued to be a very punctual patient, and readily submitted to this severe treatment till the cure was completed. To contrive, to adapt means to certain purposes, and to vary these according to circumstances, marks the actions of an intelligent agent. It is related that Chunee, the elephant that was so long at Exeter Change, on being ordered one day to take up a sixpence with his trunk, was unable to do so from its having rolled out of his reach against the skirting board. Chunee stopped and reflected a little, and then drawing in a volume of air, blew it out again with such force against the skirting board as caused the sixpence to rebound from it, when he was enabled to reach it easily. But it is not the intelligent principle only that is manifested in several of the acts of the elephant: they sometimes also display feelings and passions that show them to be possessed of some sort of moral endowment also. A painter being desirous of drawing an elephant in a particular attitude, employed a boy to throw him an apple occasionally, so as to make the animal assume the position he wished to draw it in; but more frequently the boy made only the show of doing so, and the animal was disappointed. Perceiving, however, the object of all this trickery, he determined to revenge himself, not on the boy, who was only an agent in the business, but on the painter himself, who employed him. Accordingly he patiently waited till the picture was nearly completed, and then, with one gush of water from his trunk, spoiled the painter's work and very nearly drowned the painter himself. NOTE C.-Of Elephants' Tusks. Before the settlements of the Portuguese on the coasts of Africa, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, the elephant ranged without much interruption, on the banks of the great rivers, whose courses, even at our own days, have not been completely traced. In the plains of the kingdom of Congo, where the herbage attains a wild luxuriance amidst innumerable lakes, and on the borders of the Senegal, whose waters run through extensive forests, herds of elephants had wandered for ages in security. The poor African, indeed, occasionally destroyed a few stragglers, to obtain a rare and luxurious feast of the more delicate parts of their flesh; and the desire for ornament, which prevails even in the rudest forms of savage life, rendered the chiefs of the native hordes anxious to possess the tusk of the elephant, to convert it into armlets and other fanciful embel.. lishments of their persons. Superstition, too, occasionally prompted the destruction of this powerful animal; for the tail of the elephant had become an object of reverence, and therefore of distinction to its possessor: and the huntsman, accordingly, devoted himself to steal upon the unsuspecting elephant in his pasture, and to cut off his tail with a single stroke of his rugged hatchet. But these were irregular and partial incentives to the destruction of the most mighty, and, at the same time, the most peaceful inhabitant of the woods. The steady and inexorable demands of commerce had not yet come to the shores of Africa, to raise up enemies to him in all the tribes amongst whom he had so long lived in a state of comparative security. The trade in ivory had been suspended for more than a thousand years. There were periods, indeed, in the history of the refined nations of antiquity, when this destruction of the elephant was as great as in modern times :—when Africa yielded her tributes of elephants' teeth to the kings of Persia; when the people of Judea built "ivory palaces;" when the galleys of Tyre had "benches of ivory;" when, contributing to the barbarous luxury of the early Grecian princes, Α At "The spoils of elephants the roofs inlay;" when the Etruscan attributes of royalty were sceptres and thrones of ivory; when the ancient kings and magistrates of Rome sat in ivory seats; when colossal ivory statues of their gods, far exceeding in their vast proportions and their splendid ornaments, all the magnificence of the moderns, were raised by the Greeks of the age of Pericles; and when immense stores of ivory, to be employed with similar prodigality, were collected in the temples. In the time of Pliny, the vast consumption of ivory for articles of luxury had compelled the Romans to seek for it in another hemisphere; Africa had ceased to furnish elephants' tusks, except of the smallest kind. century or two earlier, according to Polybius, ivory was so plentiful in Africa, that the tribes on the confines of Ethiopia employed elephants' tusks as door-posts, and for the palisades that enclosed their fields. When the Roman power fell into decay, and the commerce of Europe with Africa was nearly suspended for centuries, the elephant was again unmolested in those regions. He was no longer slaughtered to administer to the pomp of temples, or to provide ornaments for palaces. The ivory tablets of the citizens of ancient Rome (libri elephantini) had fallen into disuse; and the toys of modern France were constructed of less splendid materials. Angola, elephants' teeth had become so plentiful because so useless an article of trade, that in the beginning of the seventeenth century, according to Andrew Battell, an Englishman, who served in the Portuguese armies, the natives "had their idols of wood in the midst of their towns, fashioned like a negro, and at the foot thereof was a great heap of elephants' teeth, containing three or four tons of them; these were piled in the earth, and upon them were set the skulls of dead men, which they had slain in the wars, in monument of their victory.” The people of Angola and Congo, when the Portuguese first established themselves there, were found to have preserved an immense number of elephants' teeth, for centuries, and had applied them to such superstitious uses. As long as any part of the stock remained, the vessels of Portugal carried large quantities to Europe: and this traffic formed one of the most profitable branches of the early trade with Africa. About the middle of the seventeenth century the store was exhausted. But the demand for ivory which had been thus renewed in Europe, after the lapse of so many centuries, offered too great a temptation to the poor African to be allowed by him to remain without a supply. The destruction of elephants for their teeth was again unremittingly pursued throughout those extensive forests; and that havoc has gone on with little, if any, diminution, to our own day. NOTE D.-Fossil Elephants and the Mammoth. It would be difficult to estimate with any pretension to accuracy the present consumption of ivory in Europe. Its use must have been considerably diminished, on the one hand, by the changes of taste, which have dispensed with the ivory beds, and ivory chairs, that adorned the palaces of princes in the age of Leo X.; and have displaced the inlaid tables and cabinets of a century later, by articles of furniture distinguished rather for the excellence of their workmanship than for the cost of their material. But, on the other hand, the increase of comforts and luxuries amongst the middle classes of society, and the love of tasteful ornament which has descended from the palace to the cottage, (one satisfactory symptom of intellectual advancement), has probably increased the consumption of ivory in smaller articles. We understand that at Dieppe there are at present eleven flourishing manufactories of articles in ivory, from which various specimens of art, from the commonest piece of turnery to the most elaborate carving, are dispersed throughout the continent. Much is employed for crucifixes, and other appendages of Roman Catholic worship. In our own country, the demand for elephants' teeth, to be employed in the manufacture of musical instruments, plates for miniatures, boxes, chess-men, billiard-balls, mathematical rules, and small pieces of carving, is much more considerable than might occur to a superficial observation. In 1827, the customs upon elephants' teeth, the duty being 20s. per cwt., amounted to £3,257, exhibiting an importation of 364,784 lbs. In eleven years, from 1788 to 1798, 18,914 cwts. of ivory were imported, which shows an average annual importation of 192,579 lbs. In 1841, 5,712 cwts. of ele-montovakost, or mammoth's teeth, which they suppose phants' teeth were imported into Great Britain; and in 1842, 6,282 cwts. Of these quantities 1,282 cwts. were re-exported in 1841; and 1,472 cwts. in 1842. The principal supply of this article is from the East Indies and Ceylon; and next, from the west coast of Africa. Fossil elephants have been found in almost every part of the known world, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and not less in America; in the valleys formed by rivers, and on the high neighbourhood of the Andes, of which the specimens sent to Paris by Humboldt, from Villa d'Ibarra, are examples; in the scorching regions of the torrid zone, and on the icy shores of the frozen ocean. England, France, and Germany, possess amongst other countries their share of these relics of a former world, as the fossil bones of Kirkdale, Bondi, and the Hartz, amply testify. They are commonly found in the moveable and superficial beds of the earth, and particularly in those alluvial deposits which fill up the bottom of valleys, or which border the courses of rivers; they are rarely covered by rocks, and are most frequently accompanied by other fossil bones of known genera of quadrupeds, and often by marine or fresh-water shells. With but very few exceptions they are found in unconnected heaps; but in those situations in which whole skeletons are found, they appear as it were buried in a kind of clay, and in some instances even the skin and flesh are preserved, as in that described by Gabriel Sarytschew, in his voyage along the north-eastern coast of Siberia, and that of Mr. Adams, discovered near the mouth of the Lena. The great depository of elephants' bones, however, appears to be Asiatic Russia, and indeed, so numerous are they that the natives carry on a very extensive trade in the fossil ivory found there, and known by the name of mam The average weight of an elephant's tusk is about 60 lbs. To have produced, therefore, 364,784 lbs. of ivory, the import of 1827, 6,080 tusks must have been procured. This fact assumes the annual slaughter of at least 3,040 elephants. But the real havoc is much greater. Mr. Burchell, in his travels in Africa, met with some elephant hunters, who had shot twelve elephants, which, however, produced no more than two hundred pounds weight of ivory, as all the animals excepting one happened to be females. If any thing like the same ill-luck, or want of skill, attended all the African elephant hunters, upwards of forty thousand of these animals would be annually slain to supply our demand for ivory baubles. But this circumstance is, of course, an extraordinary one; and we only mention it to show the necessary waste of elephant life, in the supply of our commercial wants. belong to an animal which they have named the Mammoth, believing it lives like the mole, burrowing under the earth, but dies as soon as it sees the daylight. This curious notion they seem to have held in common with the Chinese; for a writer of theirs on natural history of the sixteenth century named Bun-zoo-gann-mu, has given a detail of the habits of an animal which he calls tienschu, very closely resembling those ascribed to the mammoth. The mammoth described by Mr. Adams, in the fifth volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of St. Petersburgh,' was first discovered by a Tongouse fisherman in the year 1799, on the banks of the Icy sea, near the mouth of the Lena, in a large misshapen block of ice. In the following year this became separated from the surrounding masses, but in the subsequent summer, the ice having melted away one whole side, one tusk of the animal was distinctly visible. The gradual development of this remarkable creature continued from year to year till the fifth after its discovery, when, in consequence of the ice having broken up early, it was drifted ashore, and the fisherman, in the month of March 1804, despoiled it of its tusks, which he sold for fifty rubles. Two years after this, Mr. Adams, who was travelling with Count Golovkin's embassy to China, hear There is a peculiarity in the commerce of elephants' teeth which forcibly arrests the imagination. Ivory is not an article of paramount necessity. The fine mar-ing of this at Iakutsek, made a journey to the spot bles would answer the purposes of statuary better, even if the ancient art of sculpture in ivory were restored; and the harder woods are quite as useful in the manufacture of furniture. It is required only for ornaments which are by no means suited to every taste; for modern Europeans have not a passion for ivory, as the Romans are said, by M. de Caylus, to have had. And yet the demand in this country, of which we hear and see little, gives activity to whole tribes of Africans; -makes elephant-hunting a trade; -exposes man to the most appalling dangers, and the severest privations; and spreads terror among thousands of these unoffending animals, who appear to have a natural right, which they have enjoyed from the creation, to the immense savannas upon which they pasture. for the purpose of seeing it. He found the skeleton perfect, with the exception of one foot, but the flesh had been given by the natives of Iakutsck to their dogs, and the wild beasts in the neighbourhood had also assisted in consuming what had been left. The greater part of the skeleton was found connected by its natural ligaments, and those bones which were separated were collected in the neighbourhood. The head was covered with a dry skin, the ball of one eye was remaining, and one ear furnished with a tuft of hair. The brain was found dried up in the skull; the neck ornamented with a long mane; the skin covered with black hairs, and reddish kind of fur or wool; and the weight of the skin which remained so great as to require the hard labour of ten men to remove it; besides which, at least thirty pounds of hair were collected from the ground. The animal was a male, and its tusks were nine feet in length. It was purchased by the emperor of Russia for 8,000 roubles, and placed by him in the Academy of St. Petersburgh. The islands north of Siberia, opposite the coast separating the mouth of the Lerna from that of the Indigirska, are so remarkable for the immense quantity of these fossil bones, that the editor of Billing's Voyage states, "every island is formed of the bones of this extraordinary animal, of the horns and skulls of buffaloes, or animals nearly resembling them, and of some rhinoceros' horns." Description," says Cuvier, " tres exagerée sans doute, mais qui prouve d quel point ces os y sont abondans." 66 In America fossil elephant bones are found, particularly in the state of Kentucky, along the banks of the Ohio, and the most remarkable assemblage are found at Big Bone Lick, which was closely examined by Governor Clarke, and whence numerous specimens were sent by him to Washington. Humboldt also discovered part of a fossil tusk at Villa de Ibarra, in the province of Quito in Peru, a hundred and seventeen toises above the level of the sea. In examining these bones it is a remarkable circumstance, that they very nearly resemble each other in character, from whatever country or climate they may have been brought, and present sufficiently strong characters to determine a new species. Although in height they resemble the Indian or Asiatic elephant, they differ from it in the greater number of lamina forming each molar tooth, and consequently an equal portion being employed in mastication, more laminæ are bared. Mr. Corse says, that in the Indian elephant, ten or twelve laminae are all which are exposed, but in the mammoth often as many as twenty-four are seen, and the enamel is less wavily disposed than in the former. The tusks generally are not more curved than in the Indian elephant, though occasionally they are found to assume an elliptical or semicircular figure; but this may have originated from accidental circumstances, which have caused their growth in such direction as to prevent their being used, and therefore they have by their natural growth acquired this curve; a circumstance frequently observed in our domestic animals, as rats, &c., in which the cuspid teeth having accidentally taken such direction as to prevent their use, continue to grow in a circular manner, so as to prevent the animal opening its mouth. One other and very striking peculiarity is the hair; in this, the mammoth differs particularly from the Indian or African elephant, in having a strong mane, and in the body being covered with long and short hairs, the former of these from twelve to fifteen inches in length, as thick as a horse's mane, and of a brown colour, whilst the latter are about nine inches long, are finer, and of a yellowish colour, but the roots of both are embedded in a fine, softish, curly, bright yellow wool, which covers a deep gray skin. This covering of hair evidently proves that the animal was intended for a cold climate; and by what means its bones have been conveyed into the regions of South America, where such warm clothing was not required, save by allowing the occurrence of some great convulsion of nature, and that by water, it would be difficult to account. In 1826, Mr. Ranking published a very amusing and interesting work, entitled Historical Researches on the Wars and Sports of the Mongols and Romans,' in which he has taken great pains to prove that the fossil bones of elephants, and other animals so frequently found, are the remains of those animals which were slaughtered in the grand hunting parties of the former, or the amphitheatrical exhibitions of the latter: and in support of that part of his opinion which relates to the Romans, he shows, that in almost every instance where the remains of a theatre have been found, there have been also discovered fossi bones in the neighbourhood. That to a certain extent this is true no one can doubt, and even Cuvier himself readily admits it, but with this difference, that such fossil bones are found in a more recent soil; whilst the remains of Blumenbach's E. Primigenius are deposited in a soil of much more ancient existence; and the bones themselves differ in many very remarkable points from those of the present known species. In the course of his work, Mr. Ranking also speaks of the great collection of fossil bones already mentioned as being found on the coasts of Siberia, which he unhesitatingly states to belong to the Trichechus Rosmarus, or walrus, an animal which in every respect differs from the bones found there. And when he refers to the elephant discovered at the mouth of the Lerna, the authenticity of which, from its skeleton being found almost entirely connected, he cannot disallow, he states, that it was probably one of those which Genghis Khan sent to his Siberian relatives, and, not improbably, was destroyed by a sudden irruption of the sea. CHAP. II. OF THE RHINOCEROS. NEXT to the elephant, the rhinoceros is the most powerful of animals. It is usually found twelve feet long from the tip of the nose to the insertion of the tail; from six to seven feet high; and the circumference of its body is nearly equal to its length. It is, therefore, equal to the elephant in bulk: and if it appears much smaller to the eye, the reason is, that its legs are much shorter. Words can convey but a very confused idea of this animal's shape; and yet there are few so remarkably formed: its head is furnished with a horn, growing from the snout, sometimes three feet and a half long; and but for this, that part would have the appearance of the head of a hog; the upper lip, however, is much longer in proportion, ends in a point, is very pliable, serves to collect its food, and deliver it into the mouth: the ears are large, erect, and pointed; the eyes are small and piercing; the skin is naked, rough, knotty, and lying upon the body in folds, after a very peculiar fashion: there are two folds very remarkable; one above the shoulders, and another over the rump: the skin, which is of a dirty brown colour, is so thick as to turn the edge of a scimitar, and to resist a musket-ball; the belly hangs low; the legs are short, strong, and thick, and the hoofs divided into three parts, each pointing forward.1 1 The natural history of the rhinoceros has been rendered more complete by Mr. Thomas's anatomical description of a male animal of this singular species, which had been brought to this country alive from the East Indies This creature appeared to enjoy good health until a few days before his death, when he was attacked with difficulty of breathing. He had not probably arrived at full growth, for he was scarcely so high as a heifer of two years old, and the Such is the general outline of an animal that | with the horn of a rhinoceros; and though it appears chiefly formidable from the horn grow- looks like wisdom to doubt whatever they tell ing from its snout; and formed rather for war us, yet I cannot help giving credit to what they than with a propensity to engage. This horn is relate on this occasion, particularly when consometimes found from three to three feet and a firmed by Pliny. The combat between these half long, growing from the solid bone, and so two, the most formidable animals of the forest, disposed as to be managed to the greatest advan- must be very dreadful. Emanuel, king of Portage. It is composed of the most solid substance; tugal, willing to try their strength, actually opand pointed so as to inflict the most fatal wounds. posed them to each other; and the elephant was The elephant, the boar, or the buffalo, are obliged defeated. to strike transversely with their weapons; but the rhinoceros employs all his force with every blow; so that the tiger will more willingly attack any other animal of the forest, than one whose strength is so justly employed. Indeed, there is no force which this animal has to apprehend: defended on every side by a thick horny hide, which the claws of the lion or the tiger are unable to pierce, and armed before with a weapon that even the elephant does not choose to oppose. The missionaries assure us, that the elephant is often found dead in the forests, pierced horn, which is affixed to the upper lip of the adult between it and the surface underneath. With re spect to the teeth, the incisors were only four in number, two situated in each jaw, and these were placed at a great distance from each other. In the head of another rhinoceros (five years old) seen by Mr. T., and where the soft parts had been removed, there were two smaller teeth placed, one on each side of those in the lower jaw. The molares were only eight in number. Their form had been noticed by Mr. Horne in the Philosophical Transactions' for 1799. But the most remarkable peculiarity in the anatomy of the animal is the connexion of four processes, arising by distinct tendons from the internal and posterior portion of the sclerotic coat, with the choroid coat of the one at its broadest diameter. These processes have a muscular appearance, and would seem to have the effect, when acting conjointly, of adapting the organ to the cognizance of more distant objects; for at their terminations they completely encircle the eye, and may therefore, by contracting, shorten the axis of vision, and bring the retina nearer to the crystalline lens. The lens itself is of a singular form, being nearly spherical, with the anterior surface a little flattened. The pigmentum nigrum was found to be confined to the inside of the choroid coat, without any structure similar to the lapidum lundum. Notwithstanding the opinion generally entertained, of the rhinoceros having bad sight, Mr. T. is led to conclude from his examination of the several appendages of that organ, that the animal is not only not deficient in quickness of vision, but that he may perhaps be superior to other animals in that particular.-ED. But though the rhinoceros is thus formidable by nature, yet imagination has not failed to exert itself in adding to its terrors. The scent is said to be most exquisite; and it is affirmed that it consorts with the tiger. It is reported also, that when it has overturned a man, or any other animal, it continues to lick the flesh quite from the bone with its tongue, which is said to be extremely rough. All this, however, is fabulous: the scent, if we may judge from the expansion of the olfactory nerves, is not greater than that of a hog, which we know to be indifferent; it keeps company with the tiger, only because they both frequent watery places in the burning climates where they are bred; and as to its rough tongue, that is so far from the truth, that no animal of near its size has so soft a one. "I have often felt it myself," says Ladvocat, in his description of this animal; "it is smooth, soft, and small, like that of a dog, and to the feel it appears as if one passed the hand over velvet; I have often seen it lick a young man's face who kept it, and both seemed pleased with the action." The rhinoceros which was shown at London in 1739, and described by Dr. Parsons, had been sent from Bengal. Though it was very young, not being above two years old, yet the charge of its carriage and food from India cost near a thousand pounds. It was fed with rice, sugar, and hay: it was daily supplied with seven pounds of rice, mixed with three of sugar, divided into three portions; it was given great quantities of hay and grass, which it chiefly preferred; its drink was water, which it took in great quantities. It was of a gentle disposition, and permitted itself to be touched and handled by all visitors, never attempting mischief, except when abused, or when hungry; in such a case there was no method of appeasing its fury but by giving it something to eat. When angry, it would jump up against the walls of its room with great violence, and make many efforts to escape, but seldom attempted to attack its keeper, and was always submissive to his threats. It had a peculiar cry, somewhat a mixture between the grunting of a hog and the bellowing of a calf. The age of these animals is not well known; it is said by some, that they bring forth at three years old; and if we may reason from analogy, it is probable they seldom live till above twenty. That which was shown in London was said by its keeper to be eighteen years old, and even at that age he pretended to consider it as a young one however, it died shortly after, and that probably distinction, however, consists in the nose being furin the course of nature. The rhinoceros is a native of the deserts of Asia and Africa, and is usually found in those extensive forests that are frequented by the elephant and the lion. As it subsists entirely upon vegetable food, it is peaceful and harmless among its fellows of the brute creation; but, though it never provokes to combat, it equally disdains to fly. It is every way fitted for war, but rests content in the consciousness of its security. It is particularly fond of the prickly branches of trees, and is seen to feed upon such thorny shrubs as would be dangerous to other animals, either to gather or to swallow. The prickly points of these, however, may only serve to give a poignant relish to this animal's palate, and may answer the same grateful ends in seasoning its banquet that spices do in heightening ours. nished with two horns, one of which is smaller than the other, and situated above it. These horns are said to be loose when the animal is in a quiet state, but when he is angry, they become firm and immoveable. Le Vaillant asserts, that when these animals direction of the wind, with their noses towards it, are at rest, they always place themselves in the in order to discover by their smell the approach of any enemies. When irritated they tear up the ground furiously with their horns, throwing the earth and stones to a vast distance over their heads. Mr. Bruce's account of these animals is interesting." "Besides the trees capable of most resistance," says this traveller, there are in the vast forests within the rains, trees of a softer consistence, and of a very succulent quality, which seem to be destined for the principal food of this animal. For the purpose of gaining the highest branches of these trees, his upper lip is capable of being lengthened out so as to increase his power of laying hold of it, in the same manner as the elephant does with his trunk.-With this lip, and the assistance of his tongue, he pulls down the upper branches, which have most leaves, and these he devours first. Having stripped the tree of its branches, he does not immediately abandon it; but, placing his snout as low in the trunk as he finds his horns will enter, he rips up the body of the tree, and reduces it to thin pieces like so many laths; and when he has thus prepared it, he embraces as much of it as he can in his monstrous jaws, and twists it round with as much ease as an ox would a root of celery, or any small plant. When pursued, and in In some parts of the kingdom of Asia, where the natives are more desirous of appearing warlike than showing themselves brave, these animals are tamed, and led into the field to strike terror into the enemy; but they are always an unmanageable and restive animal, and probably more dangerous to the employers than those whom they are brought to oppose. The method of taking them is chiefly watch-fear, he possesses an astonishing degree of swiftness, ing them, till they are found either in some moist or marshy place, where, like hogs, they are fond of sleeping and wallowing. They then destroy the old one with firearms; for no weapons that are thrown by the force of men are capable of entering this animal's hide. If, when the old one is destroyed, there happens to be a cub, they seize and tame it: these animals are sometimes taken in pit-falls covered with green branches, laid in those paths which the rhinoceros makes in going from the forest to the river side. There are some varieties in this animal, as in most others; some of them are found in Africa with a double horn, one growing above the other. This weapon, if considered in itself, is one of the strongest and most dangerous that nature furnishes to any part of the animal creation. The horn is entirely solid, formed of the hardest bony substance, growing from the upper maxillary bone, by so strong an apophyse, as seemingly to make but one part with it. Many are the medicinal virtues that are ascribed to this horn, when taken in powder; but these qualities have been attributed to it without any real foundation, and make only a small part of the many fables which this extraordinary animal has given rise to. NOTE. Varieties of the Rhinoceros. The two-horned rhinoceros differs from the other in the appearance of its skin; which, instead of vast and regularly marked folds, resembling armour, has merely a slight wrinkle across the shoulders and the hinder parts, with a few fainter wrinkles on the sides; so that, in comparison with the common rhinoceros, it appears almost smooth. The principal considering his size, the apparent unwieldiness of his body, his great weight before, and the shortness of his legs. He has a kind of trot, which, after a few minutes, increases in a great proportion, and takes in a considerable distance; but this is to be understood with a degree of moderation. It is not true, that in a plain he beats the horse in swiftness. I have passed him with ease, and seen many worse mounted do the same; and though it is certainly true that a horse can very seldom come up with him, He makes constantly from wood to wood, and forces this is owing to his cunning, and not to his swiftness. himself into the thickest parts of them. The trees that are dead or dry, are broken down as with a cannon shot, and fall behind him and on his sides in all directions. Others that are more pliable, greener, or fuller of sap, are bent back by his weight and the velocity of his motions. And after he has passed, restoring themselves like a green branch to their natural position, they often sweep the incautious pursuer and his horse from the ground, and dash eyes of the rhinoceros are very small; he seldom them in pieces against the surrounding trees. The turns his head, and therefore sees nothing but what is before him. To this he owes his death, and never escapes if there is so much plain as to enable the make him lay aside all thoughts of escaping, but horse to get before him. His pride and fury then by victory over his enemy. He stands for a moment at bay, then, at a start, runs straight forward at the horse, like the wild boar, which, in his manner of action, he very much resembles. The horse, however, easily avoids him by turning short to one side, and this is the fatal instant: the naked man with the sword, drops from behind the principal horseman, and, unseen by the rhinoceros, who is seeking his enemy the horse, he gives him a stroke across the tendon of the heel, which renders him incapable of further flight or resistance.” The double-horned rhinoceros has a formidable adversary in a fly; and this insect persecutes him so unremittingly, that it must eventually subdue him, were it not for a stratagem which he practises for his ༡༥ |