460 THE INDIAN RHINOCEROS. 



has a moderately large and long head, a protruding upper lip, and a 

 depressed skull His manners are fierce, but not aggressive ; he leads 

 a lethargic life, and wallows on the marshy banks of lakes and rivers, 

 where grows the vegetable food on which he exclusively feeds. He 

 usually measures about twelve feet in length from the tip of the nose 

 to the insertion of the tail ; his height is about seven feet ; and the 

 girth of his body is nearly equal to its length ! 



The appearance of the Rhinoceros upon the globe was probably 

 contemporaneous with that of the Proboscidese. Fossil remains of 

 the animal have been discovered in the temperate, and even the cold 

 countries of Asia and Europe. In 1772 an entire rhinoceros, admir- 

 ably preserved, was found embedded on the banks of a Siberian river, 

 in the ancient frozen soil. Now-a-days he is exclusively confined to 

 the tropical regions of the Old World. He lives a solitary life in the 

 dense jungles of India, the Sunda Islands, Central and Austral Africa. 

 Naturalists distinguish six varieties the Rhinoceros of India, the 

 one-horned Rhinoceros of Java, the two-horned Rhinoceros of Sumatra, 

 the unarmed Rhinoceros, the two-horned Rhinoceros of Africa, and 

 the Rhinoceros of Bruce. 



The Indian Rhinoceros attains the height of five to six feet, and 

 the length of seven to nine feet. He confines his wanderings in the 

 main to the Trans-Gangetic peninsula. He has but one horn, and 

 some dim tradition of this animal may probably have suggested the 

 long popular fable of the mysterious Unicorn. His skin, of a dusky 

 brown, is so singularly thick that it would have rendered all move- 

 ment impossible on the part of the quadruped, if Nature had not dis- 

 posed it in deep folds corresponding to the principal articulations. 

 Thus he seems to the eye caparisoned in a body-armour of thick 

 leather, formed in several pieces ; and in truth his impervious hide 

 constitutes a cuirass against which even musket-balls strike innocu- 

 ously. Hence he dreads not the attacks of any of the Carnivora. 



The Rhinoceros of Java is undoubtedly but a variety of the Indian 

 species. That of Sumatra differs from the preceding in the possession 

 of two horns one, the anterior, of great length ; the other, much 



