RHINOCEROS 



RHIZANTHE.E 



691 



the shoulder. It has enormous folds of skin, which 

 give it the appearance of being ' armour-plated.' 

 The African species have a smooth, though of 

 course very thick, skin. The second Asiatic rhino- 

 ceros is R. sondaicus, which is smaller than the 

 last, though also one-horned ; it occurs in Java, 

 Burma, and the Sundarbans near Calcutta. The 

 two- horned Asiatic rhinoceros (R. sumatrensis) is 

 found in Malacca, and K. lasiotis, from Chittagong, 

 eastern Bengal, is hardly separable from it. 





Kninoceros unicornia. 

 (From a Photograph by Gambler Bolton, F.Z.S.) 



Rhinoceroses were more abundant in earlier periods 

 of the earth's history than they are at present ; 

 one form (Aceratherium) existed without the char- 

 acteristic horn or horns, while another (Dicera- 

 therium ) had the horns placed side by side instead 

 of following each other. The animals are now a wan- 

 ing race, and African hunters report their dimin- 

 ished nuiiil KM s in that continent. One of the princi- 

 pal authorities upon African rhinoceroses MrF. C. 

 Selous has brought forward facts which tell of the 

 approaching extinction of these great quadrupeds in 

 South Africa. 'Twenty years ago,' he says, 'this 

 animal [R. simus] seems to have been very plenti- 

 ful in the western half of South Africa ; now 

 ( 1881 ), unless it is still to be found between the 

 Okavango and Cuiieue rivers, it must ! almost 

 extinct in that portion of the country. Ami this is 

 not to be wondered at when one reads the accounts 

 in Andersson's and Chapman's lx>oks of their shoot- 

 ing as many as eight of these animals in one night 

 as they were drinking at a small water-hole ; for it 

 must be remembered that these isolated water- 

 holes at the end of the dry season represented all 

 the water to be found over an enormous extent of 

 country, and that therefore all the rhinoceroses that 

 in happier times were distributed over many hun- 

 dreds of square miles were in times of drought 

 dependent upon perhaps a single pool for their 

 supply of water. In 1877, during several months' 

 hunting in the country to the south of Linyanti, 

 on the river Chobe, I only saw the spoor of two 

 square- mouthed rhinoceroses, though in 1874 I had 

 found them fairly plentiful in the same district; 

 whilst in 1879, during eight months spent in 

 hunting on and between the Botletlie, Mababe, 

 Machabe, Sunta, and Upper Chobe rivers, I never 

 even saw the spoor of one of these animals, and all 

 the Bushmen that I met with said they were 

 finished.' The rhinoceros has got the reputation 

 of being a savage creature, and there are terrible 

 stories of encounters ; these, however, appear to 

 have been greatly exaggerated, though individuals 

 may be vicious at times. All the species of 

 rhinoceros have been exhibited in Europe with 

 the exception of R. simus. 



The rhinoceros, united with the horse and tapir, 

 forms the Perissodactyle division of the Ungu- 



lata (q.v. ). The Asiatic rhinoceroses are dis- 

 tinguished from the African forms by tlie presence 

 throughout life of functional incisor teeth. Pro- 

 fessor Flower has shown that in other ( osteological ) 

 characters the African species are to be contrasted 

 with the Asiatic ; in spite of its two horns, R. 

 sumatrensis is more closely allied to R. unicornis 

 than to R. bicornis ; even the fossil species are 

 referable for the most part to one or the other 

 group. The Siberian R. tichorhinits, of which a 

 specimen, partly preserved through its being frozen, 

 was found by the Russian naturalist, Pallas, be- 

 longs to the African group, which is sometimes 

 separated under the generic name of Atelodits. 



Rliinoplastic Operations. When a por- 

 tion or the whole of the nose has been destroyed 

 by accident or disease, the deficiency may' be 

 restored by a transplantation of skin from an 

 adjoining healthy part. When the whole nose has 

 to be replaced, the following course is usually 

 adopted. A triangular piece of leather or gutta- 

 percha is cut into the shape of the nose, and is 

 extended on the forehead with its base uppermost ; 

 its boundaries, when thus flattened, are marked 

 out on the skin with ink. Any remains of the old 

 nose are then pared away, and a deep groove is cut 

 round the margins of the nasal apertures. When 

 the bleeding from these incisions has stopped, the 

 marked portion of the skin of the forehead must be 

 carefully dissected away, till it hangs by a narrow 

 strip between the eyebrows. When the bleeding 

 from the forehead ceases, the flap must be twisted 

 on itself, so that the surface which was originally 

 external may remain external in the new position, 

 and its edges must be fastened with stitches into 

 the grooves prepared for their reception. The nose 

 thus made is to be supported with oiled lint, and 

 well wrapped in flannel to keep up the temperature. 

 When complete adhesion has taken place, the 

 twisted strip of skin may be cut through, or a little 

 slip may be cut out of it, so that the surface may be 

 uniformly smooth. Either at the first operation or 

 subsequently a new columna ( the front part of the 

 septum) is usually formed from the skin of the 

 upper lip. When only a part of the nose, as one 

 side only, or the septum, requires to be restored, 

 modifications of the above operation are required, 

 and the skin, instead of being taken from the fore- 

 head, is taken from the cheek or the upper lip. 

 This operation is called the Indian Method, having 

 been introduced from the East and first success- 

 fully performed in Europe by Carpue in 1814. 

 It has almost entirely superseded the Talia- 

 cotian Operation, first performed by Tagliacozzi 

 or Taliacotius ( 1546-99), professor of Anatomy and 

 Surgery at Bologna, and described in his famous 

 work De Curtorum Chimrgia per Insitionem ( 1597 ). 

 He took the skin for the new nose from the arm of 

 his patient ; and there is no reason why the opera- 

 tion which he describes, although inferior in many 

 respects to that at present adopted, should not be 

 successful. The difficulty and irksomeness of keep- 

 ing the arm sufficiently long in apposition with the 

 face (a period of about twenty days) is the chief 

 objection to his method. For further details, see 

 Holme's System of Surgery, or Erichsen's, or any 

 other surgical manual. 



I' h i/;m I IK-.T. one of the five classes into which 

 Lindley divides the vegetable kingdom. There are 

 three natural orders comprised in the class viz. 

 Balanophoraceee, Cytinaceee, and Rafflesiacete, but 

 they have been placed widely apart in the botanical 

 systems of other botanists. The species comprising 

 them agree only in l>eing destitute of true leaves, 

 in having short amorphous stems or none, and in 

 being parasitical on roots. The structure of the 

 flowers, which are in some instances very large, 



