8508 



Quadrupeds. 



Kiimaird, in addition to the two-homed species which he pretended 

 to figure;* and Sir Andrew Smith assured me that he had been 

 repeatedly told by natives that such an animal occurred in the regions 

 northward of the tropic of Capricorn. In the 4 Comptes Rendus,' 

 tome xxvi. (1848), p. 281, an elaborate letter is published, " Sur 

 TExistence d'une espece Unicorne de Rhinoceros dans la partie 

 tropicale de rAfrique," from M. F. Fresnel, then consul of France at 

 Jidda (Djedda), to which the reader, curious on the subject, is 

 referred. 



Professor Schinz, in his ' Synopsis Mammalium,' makes out as many 

 as eight living species of rhinoceros. The two Asiatic one-horned 

 species, of course; and R. sondaicus ouly from Java; R. sumatranus 

 from Sumatra only, and of this he remarks, " Cornu anterius mediocre, 

 posterius minutum." His R. niger and his R. Camperi must alike be 



* Bruce's figure of the Abyssinian rhinoceros, it is well known, is a reversed copy 

 of Buffon's representation of irue K. indicus, with a second horn added ; Dr. Hiippell 

 ascertained the species to be R. afvicanus, the ordinary black rhinoceros of South 

 Africa. The earliest published genuine figure of this animal is that in the Supplement 

 to B^fyn's work ; but certainly the most spirited as well as correct pictorial represen- 

 tations, alike of the rhinoceroses and of various other animals of Africa, are given by 

 modern sporting travellers, as Comwaliis Harris, and especially C. J. Audersson. By 

 a slip of the pen, the latter writer alludes to rhinoceroses in the island of Ceylon! As 

 even Humboldt referred to the tiger of Ceylon in his ' Asie Centrale'! There are 

 capital figures of some of the arctic animals, also/in Mr. J. Lamont's ' Seasons with the 

 Sea Horses' (186i), among the rest, of the Spitzbergen deer, represented with well- 

 developed vertical brow-plates to their horns. The question about the development of 

 these deer, as compared with those of Lapland, is elucidated by Mr. Lamont, who 

 states that " They do not grow to such a large size as the tame rein-deer of Lapland, 

 nor are their horns quite so fine, but they attain to a most extraordinary degree of 

 condition." For further details, see his extremely interesting volume. However, 

 I may remark that in all his figures of rein-deer the brow-plate is represented as being 

 well developed upon each horn, whereas I suspect that it is, generally, only rudimentary 

 upon one of the pair; this, however, is probably a mistake on the part of the lithographer. 

 In further reference to the article alluded to, in which I commented upon the late 

 Professor Isidore St. Hilaire's remarks upon domestic animals, and contended that we 

 do not owe the domestication of the turkey to the Spanish invaders of America, a most 

 unlikely people to have accomplished anything of the kind, I may remark, that so 

 completely familiar had this fowl become in Shakspeare's lime that its then almost 

 recent introduction into Europe had already been forgotten, for the great bard of 

 Avon considerably ante-dates the existeuce of turkeys in England, making it prior to 

 the Spanish discovery of the New World! In the first part of the drama of King 

 Henry IV., Act ii. Scene 1, one of the carriers introduced exclaims, " 'Odsbody ! the 

 turkeys in my panniers are quite starved." But it is not impossible that- Shakspeare 

 meant the guinea-fowl, albeit not very probable, though, in either case, he had ante- 

 dated the appearance of the domestic bird in European countries. 



