THE INDIAN RHINOCEROS 447 



and twenty together, shot four of them one after the other to 

 clear his way. Messrs. Oswell and Varden killed in one year no 

 less than eighty-nine, and in one journey, Andersson shot, single- 

 handed, nearly two-thirds of this number. It is thus not to be 

 wondered at that the rhinoceros, which formerly ranged as far 

 as the Cape, is now but seldom found to the south of the 

 t ropic. The progress of African discovery bodes no good to him, 

 or to the hippopotamus. 



The single-horned Indian rhinoceros was already known to 

 the ancients, and not unfrequently 

 (loomed to bleed in the Koman amphi- 

 theatres. One which was sent to King 

 Emanuel of Portugal in the year 1513, 

 and presented by him to the pope, had 

 the honour to be pictured in a woodcut 

 by no less an artist than Albrecht ^dran Rhmoceros. 



Diirer himself. Latterly, rhinoceroses have much more fre- 

 (piently been sent to Europe, particularly the Asiatic species, 

 and all the chief zoological gardens possess specimens of the 

 unwieldy creature. 



In its native haunts, the Indian rhinoceros leads a tranquil 

 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 

 liog, ploughing 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 furious and dan- 

 gerous when provoked or attacked, charging with resistless im- 

 petuosity, and trampling down 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 

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

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



