268 HOOFED ANIMALS 



INDIAN RHINOCEROS (Rhinoceros unicornis). 

 Coloured Plate XV. Fig. i. 



The Common Indian Rhinoceros is the largest of the 

 Asiatic species, and has a wide range in the south-east of 

 the continent and adjacent large islands. Its skin, blackish 

 grey in colour, lies in a series of folds, not unlike armour 

 plates or shields in appearance. The first living animal 

 seen in Europe was one that was sent to Emanuel, King of 

 Portugal, as early as the year 1513. An average sized 

 animal has a height of about five and a half feet at the 

 shoulders, with the body over eight feet in length from 

 the tip of the snout to the root of the short-tufted tail, 

 which is about thirty inches long. 



The distinguishing feature of the head of the Rhinoceros 

 is the single nasal horn, which in the Indian species is 

 usually about a foot in length, though there is a specimen 

 in the British Natural History Museum that is nineteen inches 

 long. Like all the Asiatic species, it possesses incisor teeth, 

 a single pair of broad ones in the upper jaw, with sometimes 

 a smaller pair behind them. The normal number of cheek 

 teeth is seven in each jaw ; they have flat planes, which 

 imply that the mode of mastication is a backwards and 

 forwards motion. 



The Indian Rhinoceros inhabits the swampy grass 

 jungles, where -grasses grow to a height of twenty and 

 thirty feet. In these forests of grasses and reeds a file of a 

 dozen elephants will walk and scarcely give a sign of their 

 passage. The Rhinoceroses give still less evidence of their 

 movements, since they largely use regular runs, like those 

 of hares and rabbits in less luxuriant verdure. 



The elephant is often called into service in hunting 

 the Rhinoceros. On a single animal the hunter tracks 

 his quarry to its lair, and from his vantage point on the 

 elephant's back he is usually able to shoot with telling 

 effect. Sometimes a string of elephants is used to beat 

 the Rhinoceros out of the jungle into more open ground. 

 There is said to be mutual antagonism between the elephant 

 and the Rhinoceros, and certain it is that the larger 



