4o8 



UNGULA7A 



The common Two-horned Rhinoceros, R. bicornis, is the smaller of 

 the two, with a pointed prehensile upper lip, and a narrow compressed 

 deep symphysis of the lower jaw. It ranges through the wooded 

 and watered districts of Africa, from Abyssinia in the north to the 

 Cape Colony, but its numbers are yearly diminishing, owing to the 

 inroads of European civilisation, and especially of English sports- 

 men. It feeds exclusively upon leaves and branches of bushes and 

 small trees, and chiefly frequents the sides of wood-clad rugged 

 hills. Specimens in which the posterior horn has attained a length 



Fig. 172. — Common African Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros bicornis). 



as great as, or greater than, the anterior have been separated under 

 the name of R. keitloa, but the characters of these appendages are 

 too variable to found specific distinctions upon. The Common 

 African Rhinoceros is far more rarely seen in menageries in Europe 

 than either of the three Oriental species, but one has lived in the 

 gardens of the London Zoological Society since 1868. The molar 

 teeth of this species are of the general type of those of R. sondaicus, 

 having no combing-plate to join the crotchet in those of the upper 

 jaw. The conch of the ear is much rounded at its extremity, and 

 edged by a fringe of short hairs ; while the nostrils are somewhat 

 rounded. The eye is placed immediately below the posterior 

 horn. 1 Both in this and the following species the post-glenoid and 

 post-tympanic processes of the squamosal do not unite below the 



1 These external points of distinction from It. simus are taken from a paper 

 by Sclater in the Proc. Zool. S'oc. 1886, p. 143. 



