RHINOCEROS. 



567 



little tendency to be gregarious, they do not assemble 

 in such herds as these. We believe, that neither the 

 lion and the tiger on the one hand, as predatory 

 animals, nor the elephant on the other, arc fond of 

 invading the territory of the rhinoceros. The claws 

 and teeth of the former, could make but little im- 

 pression on the thick skin of the animal ; and its 

 vigilance is so great, that it is not easily taken by 

 surprise. The sight is, as we have said, not very 

 penetrating, and there would be no great scope for its 

 exercise, either in the finding of food, or the dis- 

 covering of danger, in the slimy jungles which the 

 animal inhabits. But the hearing and scent are very 

 acute .; the first being chiefly the one which gives 

 the alarm when danger approaches though the 

 scent also is said to be useful in this way ; and the 

 scent being the grand means of finding out the 

 favourite food. What is usually called the sense of 

 touch cannot be very acute in the general surface of 

 an animal which has so very thick a skin as the 

 rhinoceros ; but the prehensile part of th upper lip 

 appears to have that sense in a considerable degree. 

 The animal is also by no means deficient in the 

 sense of tasting ; for those that have been kept in a 

 state of confinement have shown much fondness for 

 sweet-tasted food, especially for sugar. 



From the peculiar pl.ices in which the living rhi- 

 noceri are found, and their partiality for water, we are 

 enabled to draw some conclusions with regard to 

 what must have been the general condition of the 

 earth at the time when they were more generally 

 distributed over it. This, it must be borne in mind, 

 has no reference to difference of temperature, taken 

 upon the average, and referable to the influence of 

 the sun upon the earth as the grand cause of the 

 difference of seasons. It has no reference whatever 

 to any variation in the orbit of the earth, in the 

 inclination of the axis of rotation to the plane of that 

 orbit taken on the transverse or principal diameter, 

 or to anything else of an astronomical nature, what- 

 ever that may be supposed to have been. It is not 

 the great astronomical principles of the solar system 

 that regulate the nature of the earth's productions, 

 whether vegetable or animal ; it is the condition of 

 the earth itself, and chiefly its condition with regard 

 to humidity, which, extending over a large surface, 

 tends more to equalise the temperature of the 

 different seasons, than to fix their average degree. 

 That a tropical climate was not required in the 

 high latitude?, in order that the animals might resemble 

 those now found only in tropical climates, is shown 

 by the fact, that both the elephant and the rhinoceros 

 of the north were really animals adapted for a cold 

 climate. 



The inference from this, respecting the state of the 

 higher latitudes of the eastern continent, when they 

 were inhabited by those animals up to the very 

 shores of the Northern Ocean, is easily drawn. They 

 must have been, in great part, covered with marshes; 

 and the vegetable remains of the same period 

 that are found in some of the accumulations, show 

 that a more vigorous marsh vegetation must have 

 grown in such places, than there can possibly grow 

 at the present day. If we attend to the remains 

 which are found still deeper in the earth, and which, 

 we may, therefore, suppose have been deposited there 

 at a period still more early, we find the remains of 

 plants which have evidently grown in moist places, 

 and perhaps in the water, and which have rivalled 



in their magnitudes the' tallest pines that grow 

 upon the comparatively dry surface of the same 

 regions at the present day, but which do not extend 

 into such high latitudes as these tall children of the 

 marsh must have done. Along with these last, we 

 find the remains of creatures which must have been 

 of giant bulk when in the living state ; some of 

 which, from the structure of their skeletons, must 

 have lived in the waters only, and others alternately 

 in the water and air probably, without any indications 

 in other skeletons that they ever could have walked 

 or even crawled on the surface of the earth. All 

 these have been vertebrated animals, or animals with 

 an internal spine or back-bone, supporting the 

 cranium and jaws at the anterior extremity, and 

 drawn out into a long tail at the opposite one. The 

 cranium in them all is of very small size as com- 

 pared with the whole skeleton, which indicates that 

 they must have been animals of very limited re- 

 sources, and of little general energy. The jaws, on 

 the other hand, are produced to a length which, 

 compared even with those of the crocodiles of our 

 day, appear absolutely monstrous and deformed. 

 These jaws are furnished with teeth having no re- 

 semblance to the teeth of the mammalia, and no 

 distinction of kinds in the different parts of the 

 mouth. They are simply prehensile teeth, and not 

 adapted either for killing and tearing, or for any kind 

 of mastication or bruising of the food. The teeth to 

 which they have the greatest resemblance, are those 

 of the larger saurian reptiles, which are either ab- 

 solutely inhabitants of the water, or found imme- 

 diately on its banks. 



It is of course impossible for us to refer these strange 

 i animals to any one class of the system of vertebrated 

 animals as at present existing on the earth, not only 

 on account of the dissimilarity of their organisation 

 to that of anything which we now see alive ; but 

 from the total dissimilarity of the whole vegetable 

 and animal kingdoms, and of course of the appearance 

 and state of the whole face of terrestrial nature. 

 But the class which they resemble the most, in so 

 far as can be determined from the remains, is that of 

 the reptiles. Vast powers of endurance, for long 

 and almost indefinite periods of time, and violent 

 momentary action, when aroused to it by the proper 

 stimulus, are the leading characters of the great 

 reptiles of the present age of the world. But these 

 are known to us only as inhabiting warm climates ; 

 and therefore we can establish no proper analogy 

 with them, without falling into the same error into 

 which the earlier speculators upon such subjects 

 were led, in considering the northern elephant. They 

 had made up their minds as to the degree of average 

 temperature necessary for an elephant ; and having 

 settled this part of the matter, they came to the 

 natural but not very philosophical conclusion, that 

 in the earlier stages of its history, the tropical parts 

 of the world must have had a tropical climate. In 

 good time, however, there appeared sufficient evidence 

 for the refutation of this ; for first the northern rhi- 

 noceros, and then the northern elephant, were found 

 in a state of sufficient preservation for shewing that 

 both were animals fitted for enduring the very rigours 

 of a polar climate. And, in order to make the de- 

 monstration that they did actually live in such a 

 climate complete, they were found preserved in ice 

 in which they must nave been frozen up in a very 

 recent state, and kept from the decomposing influence 



