4.50 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



indolent life, wallowing on the marshy border of lakes and 

 rivers, and occasionally bathing itself in their waters. Its 

 movements are usually slow, and it carries its head low like the 

 hog-, plougliing up the ground with its horn, and making its 

 way by sheer force through the jungle. Though naturally of 

 a quiet and inoffensive disposition, it is very dangerous when 

 provoked, charging with resistless impetuosity, and trampling 

 dow^n or ripping up with its horn any animal which opposes it. 

 Besides the single-horned species which inhabits the Indian 

 peninsula, Java, and Borneo, Sumatra possesses a rhinoceros 

 with a double horn, which is, however, distinguished from the 

 analogous African species by the large folds of its skin, and its 

 smaller size. It is even asserted that there exists in the same 

 island a hornless species, and another with three horns. There 

 surely can be no better proof of the difficulties which Natural 

 History has to contend with in the wilder regions of the tropical 

 zone, and of the vast field still open to future zoologists, than 

 that, in spite of all investigations, we do not yet even know 

 with certainty all the species of so large a brute as the 

 rhinoceros. 



In Java, this huge pachyderm is met with in the jungles of 

 the low country, but its chief haunts are the higher forest-lands, 

 which contain many small lakes and pools, whose banks are 

 covered with high grasses. In these solitudes, which are 

 seldom visited by man, the rhinoceros finds all that it requires 

 for food and enjoyment. As it is uncommonly shy, the 

 traveller rarely meets it ; but sometimes, while threading his 

 way through the thicket, lie may chance to surprise wild steers 

 and rhinoceroses grazing on the brink of a pool, or quietly 

 lying in the morass. • The grooved paths of the rhinoceros, 

 deeply worn into the solid rock, are found even on the summits 

 of mountains above the level of the sea. They are frequently 

 used for the destruction of the animal, for in the steeper places, 

 where, on climbing up or down, it is obliged to stretch out its 

 body, ^0 that the abdomen nearly reaches the ground, the 

 .Javanese fix large scythe-like knives into the rock, which they 

 cover with moss and herbage, thus forcing the poor rhinoceros 

 to commit an involuntary suicide, and teaching him, though 

 too late to profit by his experience, how difficult it is to escape 

 the cunning of man. 



