THE RHINOCEROS. 459 



they will abandon them without regret if circumstances should enable 

 them to effect their escape." 



The moral and intellectual qualities of the elephant have been 

 greatly exaggerated. As far as his morality is concerned, we must 

 pronounce him a cowardly, pettish, and rancorous animal, which retains 

 a much livelier recollection of every injury done him than of the 

 benefits he may have received. In an intellectual point of view he 

 is certainly inferior to the ape and the dog, but he is superior to the 

 Carnaria, as well as to most of the Herbivora. His faculties, perhaps, 

 may be most justly compared to those of the horse, which would 

 certainly have exhibited as much intelligence if Nature had gifted 

 him with a trunk ; for we must never forget that the development of 

 an animal's faculties greatly depends upon the perfection of his 

 organs. Again, the horse is susceptible of a complete domestication, 

 while the elephant, as Boitard has remarked, is a captive, ever dreading, 

 never loving his master, and eagerly awaiting a favourable moment 

 to escape from him. 



After the Elephant, the chief of the animals inhabiting the forests 

 is the Rhinoceros, ranged with him by Linne in the order of Belluce 

 (or enormous beasts), by Cuvier in that of Pachyderms, and by De 

 Blainville in that of Gravigrades. 



The name Rhinoceros (piv, nose, and Kepas, horn) indicates at 

 once the peculiarity which at the first glance distinguishes him from 

 the other Pachyderms. He carries, in fact, upon the arch formed 

 by his nasal bones one or two solid, curved, and sharp-pointed horns, 

 which serve him as very formidable weapons. His ears are upright, 

 pointed, and moderately large ; the eyes small and half closed. The 

 coarse thick skin, knotty or granulated on its surface, is of such 

 tenacity and impenetrability about the short thick legs and ungainly 

 body, that it resists the claws of the lion or the tiger, the sword or 

 the shot of the hunter. It hangs about the neck in several large 

 plaits or folds ; another fold passes from the shoulders to the fore- 

 ]egs, and another from the hind part of the back to the thighs. He 



