ALBERT DURER AND THE RHINOCEROS 
hunted and hunting beasts, is negatived by the sense 
of sight ? 
THE RHINOCEROS 
This great Ungulate shows all the typical character- 
istics of the Perissodactyla which have been already and 
will be referred to. For some reason or other—probably 
blackness and large size—it is confounded in the popular 
mind with its very distant relative, the hippopotamus. 
It certainly occurs in Africa; but is purely terrestrial, 
or, at most, marsh-frequenting. The rhinoceros is the 
only living Perissodactyle Ungulate which has horns 
on the forehead or anywhere. These horns, however, 
are not strictly comparable to those of goats and sheep, 
of deer and antelopes. They are to be looked upon as 
simply masses of agglutinated hairs which are borne 
upon a roughened, at most slightly raised, area of bone. 
The African rhinos have two of the horns ; some of the 
Asiatic forms have also two, the others have but one. 
Next to the presence of horns, the most salient charac- 
ters of all rhinoceroses is their thick and often folded 
skin, covered as a rule with but scanty hair. It is truly 
a “ Pachyderm,”’ and one does not wonder that Albert 
Diirer, in his celebrated drawing of the Indian form 
(Rh. indicus) represented it as armour-plated with 
indriven bolts. The strength of the rhinoceros is 
attested by the thick bars which hedge it in its cage at 
the Zoo, and its danger to human beings by the iron 
“refuges ”’ for the keepers to escape into if hard pressed. 
But it seems doubtful whether the rhinoceros is so fierce 
as it has been asserted to be. It is true that the poet, 
ingeniously rhyming, has said— 
If ever you meet a rhinoceros 
Do not linger but flee 
Up the very next tree: 
He’s a match for the gods; he can toss Eros. 
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