iniiNorKuos. 173 



regard to another species of Rliinoceros said by Sir Stamford Raffles to exist in the forests of Sumatra. 

 " There is," says Sir Stamford, " however, another animal in the forests of Sumatra never j^et noticed, 

 which in size and character nearly resembles the Rhinoceros, and which is said to bear a single horn. 

 Tliis animal is distin<2;uished by having a narrow whitish belt encircling the body, and is known to 

 the natives of the interior 1)y tin- name of Tciniii. It has been seen at several places, and the descrip- 

 tions given of it by people quite unconnected with each other coincide .so nearly tliat no doubt can be 

 entertained of the existence of such an animal. It is said to resemble in some particulars the Buffalo, 

 and in others the Badah or Rhinoceros. A specimen has not yet been procured, but I have several 

 persons on the U)ok out, an<l liave little doubt of soon being able to forward a more accurate descrip- 

 tion from actual examination. It should be remarked that the native name Tciniii has until latelj' 

 been understood to belong to the Tapir. It is so applied at Malacca and by some of the people at 

 Bencoolcn. In the interior, however, where the animals are best known, the white-banded Rhino- 

 ceros is called Tciinii, and tlie Tapir GiiidoJ, and by some Brilii-a/ii," &c. Mr. Blyth sets himself to 

 work to account for this animal never yet having been found, but it never seems to have occurred 

 to him to question its existence or to doubt Sir Stamford's judgment on the subject, and yet what 

 does his statement come to ? That in Sumatra there is an animal something between a Buffalo 

 and a Rhinoceros, with a band of white round the body, and called by the natives a Tapir. Why, 

 what on earth should it be but a Tapir? One is surprised at Sir Stamford Raffles accepting 

 the fable, and still more at Mr. Blyth following his example. 



All the three Asiatic sijecies are shown by Mr. Blyth to jiossess two typical forms or characters, 

 a broad and a narrow-skulled variety ; and it is to the existence of these two varieties that he ascribes 

 the misapprehensions as to the range of the true Rh. Indicus and Rh. Soxdaicus. However that 

 may be (and his inferences seem very fair), I draw attention to this variation in their characters for 

 another purpose. He suggests, seeing the amount of variation which exists in the living species, 

 extending into other points besides the breadth or nari'owness of the head, as, for example, the horns 

 — the remarkable horn in the British Museum on which Dr. Gray had founded his species Rh. 

 Crossii, turning out to be merely a magnificently-developed specimen of the anterior horn of Rh. 

 SuMATKANUs — that probably a// the fossil species may not be good species, and that possibly the 

 enormous remains found by Falconer and Cautley in the Sivalik formations may in j)oint of fact be 

 the vestiges of "magnificently-develojjed" individuals of the still living Indian and Sumatran species. 

 He says, "The affinity of the extinct European species with Rh. Sumatran us has been long ago 

 remarked by Cuvier and Owen. The Sevalik Rh. platyrhinus of Cautley and Falconer is just Rn. 

 Sumatraxus enormousl}' magnified ; and the Rh. Sivalexsis of the same naturalists comes exceed- 

 ingly close to the existing IxDicus with the narrow form of skull, and their Rh. pal^i:ixiiicus to the 

 same wth the broad form of skull. Can it be the identical species which has lived down to the 

 present time? The discrepancy is, at least, not greater than subsists between Bisox priscus and the 

 modern Zubr, which are considered h\ Owen to be one and the same."* 



Besides the fossil species found by Cautley and Falconer in theSiviilik formations, roni;iins of the 

 fossil Rhinoceros have been found in vast nmnbors all over Europe and Asia. No other animal, 

 unless perhaps the Mammoth, has left so many traces of its existence. From the Siberian shores of 

 the Icy Sea, southward to the Sevalik Hills, tliey have been found in greater or less abundance, as 

 well as from the Straits of Cibrallar on the east, at least as far as the banks of the Lena, on 



* r.lvtli. op. cit. J). 7 



