:< THEODORE " OF THE ZOO 



But, on the other, a naturalist in Africa related that a 

 toy terrier put a rhinoceros to ignominious flight by its 

 barks. The probable explanation is that the rhinoceros, 

 when once set going, continues on in the same straight 

 line, in obedience to the Newtonian law ; under these 

 circumstances, as with Stephenson's locomotive and the 

 hypothetical cow, it is so much the worse for anybody 

 who happens to come in its way. It is no more ferocious, 

 in fact, than a cataract or an express train. It is true 

 that " Theodore," an African rhinoceros lately on view 

 at the Zoo, but now no more, was irritable. But we 

 cannot argue from a captive to a freely roaming beast. 

 Legend has encrusted the rhinoceros as thickly as 

 Nature has. Its horns make beautiful translucent 

 drinking vessels, which so lately as the year 1762 were 

 reputed as test of poison. " When wine is poured 

 therein," wrote Dr. Brookes in that year, " it will rise, 

 ferment, and seem to boil ; but when mixed with poison 

 it cleaves in two, which experiment has been seen by 

 thousands of people." Our second best diarist, John 

 Evelyn, saw during his travels in Italy a fountain 

 which was kept sweet and free from poison by a 

 rhinoceros horn. It is held, too, that the branch cast 

 into the waters of Marah was a horn brought with him 

 by Moses from Egypt. As for unicorn legends, they are 

 manifold. But it always seems to us that the rhinoceros 

 was not the prototype of the " lufar unicorne." That 

 fabulous beast, as every one knows, is compounded, at 

 least in heraldry, of the body of a horse well maned and 

 of the horn of a narwhal. To get that out of a pon- 

 derous rhinoceros is difficult even for the imaginative 

 natural history of the ancients. No rhinoceros could 

 slumber upon a maiden's breast, unless indeed the 

 maiden were of the Barnum and Bailey kind. Much 

 more likely is it that the unicorn is a small and graceful 

 gazelle with, as rarely but occasionally happens as a 



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