History of the Rhinoceros 119 



rhinoceros in a few of the lower valleys of Bhutan, though not common. 

 In Tibet proper, the animal does not occur at present, but fossil remains 

 of it were discovered at high elevations by Sir R. Strachey near the source 

 of the Tsang-po. 1 The early Tibetan translators, when they correctly 

 rendered the Sanskrit word ganda by bse, must have entertained an exact 

 notion or reminiscence of the rhinoceros; but the animal, as every- 

 where, became rapidly exterminated in those territories where Tibetans 

 had occasion to behold and to hunt it, while the inhabitants of Central 

 Tibet seldom or never had this opportunity. For this reason, also in 

 Tibet, the rhinoceros underwent the process of fabulous "unicorniza- 

 tion." Reports of a Tibetan unicorn greatly stirred the imagination of 

 European explorers, and gave rise to wild speculations. Captain S. 

 Turner, 2 I believe, was the first to circulate such a report, being in- 

 formed by the Raja of Bhutan that he was in possession of a unicorn, 

 a sort of horse, with a horn growing from the middle of its forehead; 

 it was kept at some distance from Tassisudon, the capital, and the 

 people paid it religious respect, but Turner had no occasion to see it. 

 The Lazarist fathers Hue and Gabet, who reached Lhasa in 1846, are 

 said to have even claimed the discovery in Tibet of the unicorn of 

 Scripture. Major Latter, in the first part of the nineteenth century, 

 was very sanguine of being able to find a veritable unicorn in the interior 

 of Tibet: he was advised by a native that he had often seen these an- 

 imals, which "were fierce and exceedingly wild and seldom taken alive, 

 but frequently shot;" and that they are commonly met with on the 

 borders of the great desert, about a mile from Lhasa. From a drawing 

 which accompanied Major Latter's communication, the presumed 

 unicorn was something like a horse, but with cloven hoofs, a long, 

 curved horn growing out of the forehead, and a boar-shaped tail. Un- 

 der the heading "Unicorns in Asia," 3 a writer revived the opinion of 

 the existence of veritable unicorns, such as were reported to Major 

 Latter : the animal in question was of the deer kind, having a single horn 

 at the top of the head; it was known by the name of the Seru. 4 Then 



1 A. R. Wallace (The Geographical Distribution of Animals, Vol. II, p. 214; 

 also Vol. I, p. 122) refers to this in the words that more than twenty species of extinct 

 rhinoceroses are known, and that one has even been found at an altitude of 16,000 

 feet in Tibet. Mr. L. A. Waddell (Lhasa and its Mysteries, p. 315) has this sugges- 

 tive remark: "The dense rank growth of wildflowers and weeds along the borders of 

 the fields was such as to make this part of the Tsang-po oasis a quite suitable habitat 

 for the rhinoceros, and to bring the discovery of the fossil remains of that animal by 

 Sir R. Strachey near the source of this river into harmony with present-day facts." 



2 An Account of an Embassy to the Court of the Teshoo Lama, p. 157 (London, 

 1800). 



3 Asiatic Journal, Vol. II, 1830. 



4 Compare W. Haughton, On the Unicorn of the Ancients {Annals and Magazine 

 of Nat. Hist., Vol. IX, 1862, pp. 368, 369). 



