466 UNGULATA. 



afterward discovered and sent to St. Petersburg-. This fossil species 

 was of a yellow color, with a thick hide destitute of folds, covered with 

 stiff hair projecting from a soft woolly undercoat. 



The Rhinoceros has long been known. Its figure occurs in the 

 hieroglyphics of Egypt; many pious persons identify it with the 

 "unicorn" of the Bible, forgetting that "unicorn" is merely a conjec- 

 tural translation of the Hebrew word designating an animal of the 

 bovine family. Pliny tells us that Pompey exhibited a Rhinoceros 

 B. c. 61, in the arena at Rome. " The Rhinoceros," he writes, " is the 

 born foe of the elephant. It whets its horn on a stone, and, when fight- 

 ing, aims at the belly." He adds, that at the period of his writing, the 

 animal was found at the island of Meroe in the Nile. Strabo saw one in 

 Alexandria. Martial describes a fight between one and a bear. The 

 Rhinoceros, he says, was very sluggish and slow to engage, but finally 

 tossed the bear as a bull tosses a dog. The Arabian writers are the first 

 to distinguish between the African and Asiatic species, and the Rhi- 

 noceros plays a conspicuous part in the Arabic tales of magicians. 

 Marco Polo is the first European in modern times to mention the animal, 

 and in 15 13 King Emmanuel of Portugal received a living specimen from 

 the East Indies. Albert Durer made a wood-cut representing it ; unfor- 

 tunately he was guided by a very imperfect drawing sent from Lisbon to 

 Germany. For about two hundred years this wood-cut was the only 

 representation of the Rhinoceros. Chardin, at the beginning of the last 

 century, sent a better sketch from Ispahan, and at present accurate 

 representations of most of the species have been published. 



Although all the Rhino cerotidce have the same general traits,, yet each 

 species has its own peculiarities, some being exceedingly irritable and 

 bad-tempered, others harmless and gentle. They are everywhere more 

 dreaded than the elephant. The Arabs of the Soudan believe that 

 magicians assume the form of the monster, which is accursed from the 

 beginning — " Not the Lord, the all-creating, made them, but the Devil, 

 the all-destroying, and the Faithful must have nothing to do with them. 

 The Mussulman must quietly get out of their road, in order that he may 

 not defile his soul, and be rejected at the day of judgment."' 



The favorite haunts of the Rhinoceros are well-watered regions, 

 swampy lands, rivers that overflow their banks, and lakes with sedgy 

 and muddy shores, near which grassy plains extend. Before a creature of 

 such weight, and protected with such an armor, the densest jungle opens 



