ON A GER — RHINOCEROS — ELEPHANT 1 1 7 



mostly found in high grass, and said to associate in parties of from five to twenty 

 which consist both of sows and full-grown boars. 



The deserts of north-western India, such as the Bikanir desert, 

 Jesalmere, the Rann of Kach, and (across the Indus) the neighbour- 

 hood of Mithankot, on the Punjab frontier, form the habitat of the onager (Equus 

 onager indicus), which also occurs in Baluchistan and Afghanistan, where it 

 probably passes into the closely allied Persian race of the species. As the 

 Asiatic wild ass, of which the Indian animal is merely a local race, is de- 

 scribed elsewhere in this work, the bare mention that it is represented in north- 

 western India will suffice. 

 Indian Rnino- Poor as is India in members of the horse family, it is richer than 



ceros. an y other country in the world in rhinoceroses, all the three Asiatic 

 species occurring within its limits, although the true home of two of these is the 

 Malay area. By far the largest of the three is the Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros 

 unicornis), which, in common with the other two, differs from its African cousins 

 by its heavily folded skin. It is an inhabitant of the great grass-jungles of northern 

 India, and is now almost entirely confined to the valley of Assam, and to Nepal and 

 other districts west of the Tista River. Formerly it was much more widely 

 distributed. In the reign of the Emperor Baber, for instance, from 1505 to 1530, 

 it was common in the Punjab up to Peshawar, and its remains have been found as 

 far south as Madras. 



The Indian rhinoceros attains a height of 5 feet or more, and from the point of 

 the nose to the tip of the tail measures over 10 feet, the tail being 27 inches in length. 

 The horn, however, is seldom more than 12 inches long. The skin is bare, except 

 the ears and the tail, and is studded with prominent tubercles ranging up to an 

 inch in diameter, the largest of which are on the thighs and shoulders. Of the 

 folds which divide the skin into large shields, one is situated at the back of each 

 shoulder, and another in front of each thigh. Large folds also surround the neck, 

 others are below the shoulders and thighs, and on the hind-quarters, so that the tail 

 lies in a deep furrow. The colour is blackish grey, with no lighter or darker shades. 

 The Indian rhinoceros is an inhabitant of ground where it can bathe and 

 wallow in the mud. It is quiet and peaceable in disposition ; all that has been 

 written about its savageness and its animosity against the elephant resting on no 

 basis of fact. A wounded or much-molested animal may, however, sometimes 

 defend itself, and when it does, it uses not its horn but its pointed lower incisors in 

 the same way as the wild boar uses his tusks. It generally feeds during the 

 morning and evening, and sleeps during the day, its food consisting principally of 

 grass and herbage. The Sumatran and Javan rhinoceroses are noticed under the 

 heading of the Malay fauna. 



Unlike the Indian rhinoceros the Indian elephant (Elephas 

 Indian Elephant. ., _...., ■,. . . 



maximus) is not restricted to India, its range extending into biam, 



Cochin China, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and even Borneo, where, however/ 



it may have been introduced. In India wild elephants are still found along the 



foot of the Himalaya as far west as Dehra Dun, and in a few localities tbey are 



met with down to Mysore and even farther south ; but their distributional area is 



by no means so large now as it used to be. 



