422 



CLASS MAMMALIA. 



and being, as I have endeavoured to show, only concreted 

 hair, nature might, if its mode of life required, have given 

 it other horns of the same kind on any part of the body, 

 without at all disturbing that system and those laws which 

 she has followed in the structure of every quadruped. 



" It is this rule of nature, and consequent reasoning, 

 which will not allow me to believe that the Unicorn, such 

 as we see it represented, exists anywhere but in those re- 

 presentations, or in imagination; and many circumstances 

 concur to render it highly probable, that the name was at first 

 intended for nothing more than a species of Rhinoceros." 



The common Two-horned Rhinoceros, the R. Bicornis of 

 Linnaeus, when named, was supposed to be the only species 

 distinguished by two horns ; modern discoveries, however, 

 have refuted this notion, and our author substituted the 

 epithet Africanus for that of Bicornis : this, however, ap- 

 pears to be an insufficient distinction, as still more recently 

 Mr.Burchell has described a second species, with two horns, 

 proper to South Africa. 



This species is destitute of incisive teeth, and even of an 

 intermaxillary bone; the skin is excessively thick, but not 

 so much so as the Asiatic species. Mr. Burchell found 

 that musket-balls, of a mixture of lead and tin, penetrated 

 this skin easily, though they were flatted by striking against 

 the bones ; but he thinks that balls of lead alone, or if fired 

 with a weak charge of powder, might possibly be turned 

 by the thickness of the hide : it is perfectly smooth, and 

 destitute of those extraordinary folds which mark its Asiatic 

 congener. On the central line down the face, and above the 

 nostrils, is placed the first and largest horn, the lower edge 

 of which is nearly on the same horizontal plane as the eye; 

 from this lower edge is continued the flexible upper lip, 

 which the animal makes considerable use of as an organ 

 of touch, and for seizing its food; the lower horn represents 

 a long sharp-pointed cone, crescented or inclining gently 



