724 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



purposes. Among Oriental princes, goblets made of rhinoceros-horn are in high 

 esteem, as they are supposed to have the virtue of detecting poison by causing the 

 deadly liquid to ferment till it flows over the rim, or, as some say, to split the cup. 

 The number of rhinoceroses destroyed annually in South Africa is very considerable. 

 Captain Harris, who onoe saw two-and-twenty together, shot four of them one after the 

 other to clear his way. Messrs. Oswell and Varden killed in one year no less than 

 eighty-nine ; and in one journey, Andersson shot, single-handed, nearly two thirds of 

 this number. It is thus not to be wondered at that the rhinoceros, which formerly 

 ranged as far as the Cape, is now but seldom found to the south of the tropic. The 

 progress of African discovery bodes no good to him or to the hippopotamus. 



The single-horned Indian rhinoceros was already known to the ancients, and not 

 unfrequently doomed to bleed in the Roman amphitheatres. One which was sent to 

 King Emanuel of Portugal in the year 1513, and presented by him to the Pope, had 

 the honor to be pictured in a wood cut by no less an artist than Albrecht Durer himself. 

 Latterly, rhinoceroses have much more frequently been sent to Europe, particularly 

 the Asiatic species, and all the chief zoological gardens possess specimens of the un- 

 wieldy creature. 



In its native haunts, the Indian rhinoceros leads a tranquil, indolent life, wallowing 

 on the marshy border of lakes and rivers, and occasionally bathing itself in their 

 waters. Its movements are usually slow, and it carries its head low like the hog, 

 plowing up the ground with its horn, and making its way by sheer force through the 

 jungle. Though naturally of a quiet and inoffensive disposition, it is very furious 

 and dangerous when provoked or attacked, charging with resistless impetuosity, and 

 trampling down or ripping up with its horn any animal which opposes it. 



Besides the single-horned species which inhabits the Indian peninsula, Java, and 

 Borneo, Sumatra possesses a rhinoceros with a double horn, which is, however, distin- 

 guished from the analogous African species by the large folds of its skin, and its 

 smaller size. It is even asserted that there exists in the same island a hornless spe- 

 cies, and another with three horns. There surely can be no better proof of the diffi- 

 culties which Natural History has to contend with in the wilder regions of the tropical 

 zone, and of the vast field still open to future zoologists, than that, in spite of all in- 

 vestigations and travels, we do not yet even know with certainty all the species of so 

 large a brute as the rhinoceros. 



In Java, this huge pachyderm is met with in the jungles of the low country, but its 

 chief haunts are the higher forest-lands, which contain many small lakes and pools, 

 whose banks are covered with high grasses. Here and there, also, the woods are in- 

 terspersed with dry pasture-grounds, and even in the interior of the forests, numerous 

 species of graminese are found increasing in number as they rise above the level of 

 the sea. In these solitudes, which are seldom visited by man, the rhinoceros finds all 

 that it requires for food and enjoyment. As it is uncommonly shy, the traveler rarely 

 meets it, but sometimes, while threading his way through the thicket, he may chance 

 to surprise wild steers and rhinoceroses grazing on the brink of a pool, or quietly lying 

 in the morass. The grooved paths of the rhinoceros, deeply worn into the solid rock, 

 and thus affording proof of their immemorial antiquity, are found even on the summits 

 of mountains above the level of the sea. They are frequently used for the destruction 

 of the animal, for in the steeper places, where, on climbing up or down, it is obliged 



