ELEPHANTS, RHINOCEROSES, AND HORSES 271 



Megarhine rhinoceros above mentioned was identical with this 

 common African species. Lastly, there co-existed with man in 

 Britain, down to quite a late period, the woolly rhinoceros 

 {Diceros antiquitatis)} This creature appears to have been 

 very closely allied, structurally, to the large "white," or 

 Burchell's, rhinoceros, which still lingers in East and South- 

 Central Africa {Diceros simus, the Square-lipped). The woolly 

 rhinoceros evidently persisted in Europe and Siberia, if not in 

 England, down to the verge of the Historical period.^ Its body 

 was covered with woolly hair. It is supposed to have carried a 

 tremendous front horn, longer even than the longest known 

 horn of the white rhinoceros, that is to say, perhaps as much as 

 5 ft. or more in length. The length and weight of this horn 

 have been inferred from the special bony wall which has been 

 developed in the skull between the nasal bones. The Tichorhine 

 rhinoceros had, of course, two horns, as in other members of 

 the genus Diceros. In bulk it was, perhaps, larger than the 

 largest known specimens of the white rhinoceros when fully 

 mature, though this idea is only derived inferentially from the 

 proportionate size of some of the bones. In the entire specimens 

 of the Tichorhine rhinoceros which have actually been preserved 

 for our inspection in the frozen soil, the size was not larger than 

 that of the existing African rhinoceroses. The woolly rhinoceros 

 had a smooth hide, like that of the African forms, without the 

 folds in the skin characterising those of Asia. The fur grew 



^ Sometimes called the Tichorhine rhinoceros, and, of course, given the 

 generic title of Rhinoceros by all older writers. 



2 Some of the legends of monsters and dragons that were killed by 

 popular heroes in Germany, Hungary, and Poland seem even to have been 

 based on the destruction of lingering specimens of the woolly rhinoceros. It 

 is stated, though I cannot find the requisite authority, that a traveller in 

 Germany, asking to see the remains of a monster kept in a castle as a relic 

 of some past deed of prowess, was shown the skull of a rhinoceros ; and at 

 Klagenfurt, the head of a supposed dragon preserved in the Town Hall, and 

 used as the model for a monster killed by a knight, and represented in the 

 statuary of a fountain, is stated by Herr Unger, of Vienna, to be the skull of 

 a woolly rhinoceros. 



