2254 Quadrupeds. 



rhinoceros, belonging to Raymond and Waring's menagerie, had broken loose from 

 his cage, and was committing terrible havoc among the cattle in that vicinity. 



" It seems that some time during Saturday night the elephant, Columbus, who is 

 not one of the most amiable disposition, amused himself by tearing off the strong iron 

 bars from the cage in which the rhinoceros was secured. Finding himself menaced 

 the rhinoceros came from his cage and showed fight. He was no sooner on the ground 

 than he received two or three heavy blows from the trunk of the elephant upon his 

 back, which beat him to the earth, where he lay for some time as if dead. 



11 The elephant then endeavoured to finish him by trampling upon him, which the 

 rhinoceros evaded by jumping under the body of his powerful antagonist, in which 

 position he gave the elephant several upward thrusts with his prodigious horn that 

 projects from his head, which put his elephantship hors du combat. The keepers 

 finding it impossible to secure the infuriated beast alone, called upon the neighbours 

 for assistance, which was promptly given, and every effort made to prevent him doing 

 further mischief. 



" In the meanwhile the rhinoceros had got into the open fields, where he confined 

 his operations to the frightening of horses and cows that were in the pasture, and 

 then took to a neighbouring swamp, where he luxuriated in his favourite* recreation of 

 bathing, with the same unconcern as if he had been wallowing among his own native 

 marshes in Japan. 



" Finding it impossible to capture him by means of traps and meshes, the propri- 

 etors at length came to the conclusion of despatching him, and for this purpose pro- 

 cured a number of muskets. They might as well have fired against the side of a 

 stone wall, as his hide resisted the balls as if he had been encased in iron. Up to a 

 late hour last evening they had not succeeded in taking him, although more than five 

 hundred persons were engaged in the pursuit, and a large reward offered for his cap- 

 ture alive. The elephant is so badly wounded that he is not expected to recover." — 

 Western Friend, Eighth Month (August) 3, 1848. 



Russian Field Sports. 



[The following extract is from a clever and entertaining little book, intituled ' Life 

 in Russia, or the Discipline of Despotism. By Edward P. Thompson, Esq.' * I feel 

 confident that the readers of the ' Zoologist ' will be pleased with the passages I have 

 cited, and I hope they may be induced to peruse the volume. — Edward Newman.'] 



" The wolf is destroyed in a variety of ways : sometimes he is ridden down by two 

 horsemen, whose horses, passing with ease and rapidity over the hard-frozen surface of 

 the snow, soon bring them abreast of him, when he is brought down by a pistol shot ; 

 and at other times he is enticed within gun-shot, by men driving in a sledge in the 

 neighbourhood of his haunts, and dragging a bundle of hay behind them with a long 



* London : Smith, Elder and Co., Cornhill. 1848. 



