Game Animals of India, etc. 



THE GREAT INDIAN RHINOCEROS 



(^Rhinoceros unicornis) 



Native Names. — Gainda and Gargadan^ Hindustani ; 

 Karkadan^ Punjabi ; Gonda^ Bengali 



(Plate i, fig. 2) 



No one is likely to confound a " rhino " with a 

 giraffe, and yet these are the only two groups of living 

 land animals furnished with a horn situated in the 

 middle line of the skull. The horn of a giraffe is, 

 however, very unlike the horn (or horns) of a rhino- 

 ceros, being composed of a boss of bone, covered with 

 skin, and situated on the forehead of the skull, to which 

 in adult age it is immovably attached. In all living 

 rhinoceroses, on the other hand, the horn (or horns) 

 is composed of agglutinated hairs, and has no firm 

 attachment to the bones of the skull, which are merely 

 roughened and somewhat elevated so as to fit into the 

 concave base of the solid horn. As Sir Samuel Baker 

 has well remarked, the attachment of the horn of a 

 rhinoceros to the skull is very like that of the leaves 

 of an artichoke to the " choke." In those species of 

 living rhinoceros in which there is a single horn, this 

 is placed immediately above the nose, and it is only 

 in the two-horned species that there is a horn on the 

 forehead, comparable in position with the giraffe's 

 median horn. There is, however, an extinct Siberian 

 rhinoceros with a single horn having the same situation 

 as the latter. An equally marked structural difference 

 obtains between the solid hair-like horn of a rhinoceros 

 and the hollow horn of an ox, sheep, or antelope on 

 the one hand, and the entirely bony antler of a deer, 

 so that these appendages are absolutely distinctive of 

 the former animals. It happens, however, that the 

 female of the Javan rhinoceros is frequently more or 



, 26 



