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XII. On the Bhinoceroses now or lately living in the Society's Menagerie. 

 By P. L. ScLATEK, M.A., Ph.D., F.B.S., Secretary to the Society. 



Read June 15, 1875. 



[Plates XCV. to XCIX.] 



±HE main object of my remarks on the present occasion is to illustrate the very 

 beautiful drawings by Mr. Wolf now before us. The series of the living species of the 

 genus Bhinoceros now or lately living in the Society's Gardens being much larger than 

 any that has ever yet been brought together, and the figures of these animals hitherto 

 published having been mostly taken from stuffed and distorted skins, it has been thought 

 that the present opportunity of obtaining correct outlines of the external form of the 

 five species in our Gardens should not be passed by. Under these circumstances the 

 finished water-colour drawings which I now exhibit have been prepared by Mr. Wolf. 

 Taking them in order, one by one, I propose to say a few words, chiefly on the life- 

 history of the individual specimens figured, and on points in immediate connexion 

 therewith. 



1. Ehinocebos unicobnis. (Plate XCV.) 



Rhinoceros unicornis, Linn. S. N. i. p. 104 (1766). 

 Rhinoceros indicus, Cuv. Menag. d. Mus. d'H. N. (1801). 

 Rhinoceros unicornis, Sclater, Rev. Cat. Vert. p. 79. 



Of this huge animal the first specimen obtained by the Society was a male, purchased 

 on the 28th of May, 1834, from Capt. Fergusson, for the sum of £1050', as I find on 

 reference to the ' Minutes of Council ' of that date. . It died in November 1849, and 

 was dissected by Professor Owen, who has given us the results of his examination of it 

 ' in the excellent memoir published in the Society's ' Transactions ' ". Its skin was 

 mounted, and is now in the Gallery of the British Museum. 



In the following year this loss was replaced by the acquisition of a young female of 

 the same species, purchased on the 5th of July, 1850, for the sum of £350. This 

 animal lived more than twenty-three years in the Gfirdens, and died on tlie 14th of 

 December 1873^ A few years before her death this Ehinoceros grew a horn of very 

 abnormal size and shape, which I described as follows in a communication to the 

 Society on this subject in 1871 ^: — 



' See P.Z. S. 1834, p. 41, and Minutes of CouncQ, vol. iii. p. 413. - Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. iv. p. 31. 

 ' Cf. Garrod, P.Z. S. 1874, p. 2. ■" P. Z. S. 1871, p. 10. 



VOL. IX. — PART XI. No. 1. — December, 1876. 4 s 



