MAMMALIA—RHINOCEROS. 307 
to be hunted and subdued. They never attack men unless provoked ; but 
then they become furious, and are very formidable. The steel of Damascus, 
the cimeters of Japan, cannot make an incision in his skin; the darts and 
lances cannot pierce him through. His skin even resists the balls of 
a musket; those of lead become flat upon his leather, and the iron ingots 
cannot penetrate through it. The only places absolutely penetrable in this 
body, armed with a cuirass, are the belly, the eyes, and round the ears; so 
that huntsmen, instead of attacking this animal standing, follow him ata 
distance by his track, and wait to approach him at the time that he sleeps 
or rests himself. There is, in the king of France’s cabinet, the fetus of a 
rhinoceros, which was sent from the island of Java, and extracted from the 
body of the mother. It was said, in a memorial which accompanied this 
present, that twenty-eight huntsmen had assembled to attack inis rhinoce- 
ros. They had followed her far off for some days, one or two men walking 
now and then before, to reconnoitre the position of the animal. By these 
means, they surprised her when she was asleep, and came so near in 
silence, that they discharged, all at once, their twenty-eight guns into the 
lower parts of her belly. 
A rhinoceros, about a year old, recently brought from Calcutta, was 
lately exhibited in Boston. The engraving furnishes a very exact represen- 
tation of this animal. Its length, from the nose to the insertion of the tail, 

was six feet; its height, three feet four inches. The length of its head, 
eighteen inches; that of its tail, thirteen inches. The horn had not made 
its appearance upon the nose, but there was a large protuberance, which 
indicated the place where it was growing, and seemed to form the root or 
basis of it. The animal, when disturbed, made a noise like a young calf. 
It had very much the air and manners of a hog. It betrayed no fear 
