VOL. XLII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 697 



The skin of the rhinoceros is thick and impenetrable ; in running one's fingers 

 under one of the folds, and holding it with the thumb at the top, it feels like 

 a piece of board 4^ inch thick. Dr. Grew describes a piece of one of these 

 skins tanned, which, he says, " is wonderful hard, and of that thickness, ex- 

 ceeding that of any other land animal he has seen." It is covered all over more 

 or less with hard incrustations like so many scabs; which are but small on the 

 ridge of the neck and back, but grow larger by degrees downwards toward the 

 belly, and are largest on the shoulders and buttocks, and continue pretty large 

 on the legs all along down ; but, between the folds, the skin is as smooth and 

 soft as silk, and easily penetrated; of a pale flesh-colour, which does not appear 

 to view in the folds, except when the rhinoceros extends them, but is always 

 in view under the fore and hinder parts of the belly, but the middle is iucrusted 

 over like the rest of the skin. To call these scabbed roughnesses scales, as 

 some have done, is to raise an idea in us of something regular; which in many 

 authors is a great inaccuracy, and leads the reader into errors; for there is no- 

 thing formal in any of them. 



As to the performance of this animal's several motions, let us consider the 

 great wisdom of the Creator, in the contrivance that serves him for that pur- 

 pose. The skin is entirely impenetrable and inflexible; if therefore it was 

 continued all over the creature, as the skins of other animals, without any 

 folds, he could not bend any way, and consequently not perform any necessary 

 action; but that suppleness in the skins of all other quadrupeds, which renders 

 them flexible in all parts, is very well compensated in this animal by those 

 folds; for, since it was necessary his skin should be hard for his defence, it was 

 an excellent contrivance, that the skin should be so soft and smooth underneath, 

 that, when he bends himself any way, one part of this board-like skin should 

 slip or shove over the other ; and that these several folds should be placed in 

 such places of his body, as might facilitate the performance of every voluntary 

 motion he might be disposed to. 



As the great number of horns that are to be found in the museums of the 

 curious, brought from time to time from the East Indies, are single; we may 

 venture to assert, that all those of Asia have really but one horn on the nose; 

 and this is confirmed by many gentlemen, who had seen those creatures in 

 Persia, and other parts of the east. Hence it is easy to conclude, that this was 

 the reason the single horn was imagined the standard of nature for that animal, 

 and that therefore Martial ought rather to have said, that two bears, or, ac- 

 cording to Bochart, two wild bulls, were tossed by the strong horn of the 

 rhinoceros, than that a single bear was thrown up by his double horn. 



We do not want sufficient proofs to show, that there is a species of those 



VOL. viu. 4 U 



