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THE UGLIEST BEAST IN THE WORLD 



Most people would agree, if they were asked to vote, that 

 the ugliest and clumsiest of all animals is the rhinoceros. 

 Even the hippopotamus shines by comparison, frightful 

 though it is, because, for one reason, it is a water beast, 

 and a water beast can never manage to look so nasty as a 

 land one. 



To begin with, the rhinoceros' shape is heavy and awk- 

 ward, and the horn, right in the middle of its face, does 

 not add to its beauty. Then its eyes, instead of being large 

 and soft, as they so often are in a wild animal, look mean 

 and small, though they are several times the size of those of 

 a man. But, worst of all, its skin is hard and hairless, and 

 looks as if it would come off in scales. Oh, there is no 

 doubt that a rhinoceros is a very ugly beast indeed ! 



The tribe is divided broadly into two kinds, and is 

 now seldom seen north of the Zambesi river. The white 

 rhinoceros, who must look even more unwholesome 

 than her black fellow, is timid, gentle, and fat, and eats 

 nothing but grass. The black rhinoceros is thin, fierce, 

 and very cautious ; but both alike take care never to stray 

 more than seven or eight miles from a river, as they can- 

 not go for months without water, like the eland and some 

 kinds of gazelles. 



But whatever we may think of them, even rhinoceroses 

 %re not without their friends and admirers ; and chief 

 among these are a race of birds, which are never happy 

 unless they are sitting on their broad backs. If by any 

 chance the bird misses its rhinoceros, while the great 



