History of the Rhinoceros 



99 



and the comparisons could not be any better. We should halt a moment 

 to reflect by what class of people these observations had been made. 

 Most certainly by the 

 hardy hunters who chased 

 the wild beasts. We must 

 distinguish between the 

 original observer and story- 

 teller, and the scholar 

 closeted in his study who 

 draughted the definitions 

 for the consumption of the 

 learned. It was not the 

 Chinese philologist who 

 went out into the jungle 

 to study the rhinoceros; he, 

 indeed, never had occasion 



to see it, but he derived his knowledge from reports made to him by the 

 sportsman. The latter probably was plain and matter-of-fact; the 



Fig. 7. 



Struggle of Bear and Rhinoceros, represented on a Clay 



Lamp from Labicutn (after 0. Keller, Tiere des 



classischen Altertums). 



Fig. 8. 

 Sumatran Rhinoceros, Sketch from Museum Specimen (compare Elliot, Catalogue of the Collection 



of Mammals, Zo61. Series, Vol. VIII, p. 105). 



former added a bit of romance and exaggeration. Have we any right to 

 ridicule the Chinese over their embarrassment as to where to locate the 

 horn or the horns, when we observe that this was still a matter of wild 

 speculation amidst Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? 1 



1 Dr. Parsons, in the pamphlet quoted, justly remarks, "Nothing could serve as 

 a better proof of how easily men may fall into uncertainty through preconceived 

 conclusions than this very topic of the horn of the rhinoceros." 



