NOTE -BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 47 



fortable dowagers now take their airings without fear of 

 the dashing, well-mounted highwaymen, who formerly 

 took toll in Marylebone Fields ; but malaria still lurks 

 there, shrouded in the mist that rises from the marshy 

 OTOund and that ornamental but unblessed lake — for no 

 stagnant water resting upon a basin of clay can ever 

 carry healing on the wings of its evaporation. 



But to return to the deceased rhinoceros. On dissec- 

 tion it was manifest that the animal had broken a rib, 

 probably in throwing itself heavily down to rest in its 

 uncouth manner. This fracture might have injured the 

 lungs at the moment, and the subsequent anchylosis pro- 

 bably produced a j)ressure which accelerated the disease. 

 Shortly before death the animal strained to vomit, 

 without effect, with the exception of some froth tinged 

 with blood at the mouth ; and soon afterwards bloody 

 matter was discharged at the nose. These are not 

 pleasant particulars ; but these lines may meet the eyes 

 of some of those interested in the management of the 

 animals, and may afford hints for the future. 



Poor fellow, he was stupidly good-natured in the 

 main, and would let the visitors rub his nose or his horn 

 — ^which, by the way, he never permitted to grow, but 

 kept it constantly rubbed down — or tickle him about 

 the eye, or place their hands in the folds of his stout 

 mail-like buff coat, where the skin, as we heard an 

 honest yeoman, who was making the experiment, say, 

 was ' as soft as a lady's !' He was very good friends 

 with poor old Jack the elephant, now dead and gone, 

 notwithstanding the stories of the violent antipathy 

 which the two huge beasts bear to each other, and how 

 the rhinoceros runs his horn at last into the elephant's 

 belly, and how the blood of the elephant runs into the 

 eyes of the rhinoceros and blinds him, when the roc, or 

 ruk, poimces upon the combatants, and carries them 

 both off in his claws. Our elephant used to tickle the 



