148 MAMMALIA. 



rapidly, and without tlie least exertion, as it seems, these huge, 

 heavily-built, unwieldy-looking animals get over the ground, 

 consisting of the densest jungle, of hill-reeds, bushes, and brush- 

 wood, and thick .sa/-saplings, interspersed with large trees. 

 Awkward as is their gait, they trot very fast ; I say trot, for their 

 movement more nearly resembles a trot than anything else, though 

 actually it is rather a gait between a trot and a canter. Elephants 

 with howdahs have no chance with them in the chase, and rmless 

 dropped with the first shot, or they suddenly stop and turn to 

 stand at baj^, thus exposing the fatal spot in the temple within 

 fair ball-distance, thej- generallj^ manage to escape. It is useless 

 firing at the body."* This was written before the present far 

 more efficient st^de of weapon came into use (the low trajectory 

 rifle) , or the terrible explosive shell was invented, which is now so 

 fatally destructive to the largest of land quadrupeds, as well as to 

 the most gigantic of marine Cetaceans. 



In the eavlj part of the sixteenth centurj' of our era the famous 

 Mogid EmjDeror Baber (the great-grandson of Timour Lang, or 

 Tamerlane, and the founder of the d3'nasty of the Great Mogul) 

 mentions incidentally, in his public memoirs, the occurrence of the 

 Rhinoceros, the wild Bufialo, and the Lion in the neighbourhood 

 of the city of the Benares, and the wild Elephant in the vicinity 

 of Cliunar. In his notice of the animals pecidiar to Hindustan, 

 after describing the Elephant, the imperial author remarks, " The 

 Rhinoceros is another. This also is a huge animal. The opiinion 

 prevalait in our corxntries that a Pwhinoceros can lift an Elephant 

 on its horn is probably a mistake. It has a single horn over its 

 nose upwards of a span in length ; but I never saw one of two 

 spans." (From this it would seem that the particular species 

 referred to is R. sondaiciis, inasmuch as Baber would probably 

 have been able to obtain larger examples of the horn of R. incUcus.) 

 " Out of one of the largest of these horns I had a drinking vessel 

 made and a dice-box, and about three or four fingers' hulk of it 

 might be left. Its hide is very thick. If it be shot at with a 

 powerfid bow drawn up to the arm-pit with much force, the arrow 

 enters three or four fingers' breadth. They say, however, that 

 there are parts of its skin that may be pierced and the arrows 

 enter deep. On the sides of its two shoulder-blades, and of its 



* Liiuidar remarks, "Viscera ad equina acccdunt." 



