428 OX THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADRUPEDS. 



A drawing of it was sent from Lisbon to Albert Durer, tbe celebrated 

 painter and engraver of Nuremberg ; he engraved a figure of it, which 

 the books on natural history for a long time recojned (Gesner, quadr., 

 p. 841 ; Aldrov. bisulc, 884 : Jonst. quadr., t. xxxviii). It is very 

 good for a general outline ; but the wrinkles and tubercles of the skiu 

 are exaggerated in it, so much so, as to make one suppose that the ani- 

 mal was covered with scales, or rather with the valves of shells. 



A second was brought to England in 1685; a third was exhibited 

 almost over all Europe in 1739 ; and a fourth, which was a female, in 

 1741. That of 1739 was described, and a drawing made of it by Par- 

 sons, (Phil. Trans, xlii. No. 523), who mention also that of 1741. I 

 think the latter was the same as that which was exhibited in Paris, in 

 1749, painted by Oudry, then designed by Edwards in 1752*; in a 

 word, this is also the one of which a figure is given by Albinus, in 

 plates 4 and 8 of his history of the muscles. It was described by Dau- 

 benton, and observations made on it by Meckel. 



That whose osteology we have described, is consequently but the 

 fifth. It came very young to Versailles, in 1771. Buffon speaks of it 

 in his Supplements, tome iii, plate 287, and it died in 1793, at the age 

 of twenty-five or twenty-six years. 



A sixth, which was very young, designed for the menagerie of the 

 Emperor of Germany, died in London, a little after its arrival from In- 

 dia, in 1800, and was dissected by M. Thomas, a surgeon, who pub- 

 lished his observations on it in the Philosophical Transactions. We 

 saw one in Paris, in 1814, which was carried to Germanyf. 

 These seven animals were all one-horned. 



Two individuals described by travellers, to wit, that which Chardin 

 saw at Ispahan, and which came from Ethiopia, and that of which Pison 

 gave a figure in the Natural History of India, from Bontius, bad also 

 but one horn. 



Thus, on the one hand, the two- horned rhinoceros, was never brought 

 alive to Europe in modern times ; and on the other hand, travellers 

 were a long time in giving a detailed description of it. It was known 

 only by its horns, which were to be found in several cabinets. 



Aldrovande had to be sure published a tolerably just figure of it 

 (Solid, p. 383), which had been communicated to him by Camerarius, a 

 physician of Nuremberg; but this figure, without either description or 

 detail, was very badly copied by Jonston, tab. xi, and totally forgotten 

 by other naturalists. 



ParsonsJ was the first who tried to prove that the one-horned rhino- 

 ceros always belongs to Asia, and the two-homed to Africa. 



Though Flaccourt§ saw the latter in the bay of Saldanah ; though 

 Kolbe, Biebering, and others, always considered the rhinoceros of the 

 Cape is two-horned, Colonel Gordon was the first who gave an accu- 

 rate and complete description of this species, and his description was 

 inserted, by Allamand, in the Supplements of Buffon||. 



* Edwards, Glean., plate ccxxi. 

 T It was seen again in Paris, in 1833. 

 J Phil. Trans., tome xlii, No. 523. 

 § Flaceourt, Hist, de Madagascar, p. 378. 



II Suppl. de l'ed. de Hollande, tome v, p. 9. et plate v ; et dans l'ed. de Paris, 

 tome vi, p. 78, et pl.vi. 



