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42 
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“THEODORE” OF THE ZOO 
But, on the other, a naturalist in Africa related that a 
toy terrier put a rhinoceros to ignominious flight by its 
barks. The probable explanation is that the rhinoceros, 
when once set going, continues on in the same straight 
line, in obedience to the Newtonian law; under these 
circumstances, as with Stephenson’s locomotive and the 
hypothetical cow, it is so much the worse for anybody 
who happens tocomeinitsway. Itisno more ferocious, 
in fact, than a cataract or an express train. It is true 
that “ Theodore,” an African rhinoceros lately on view 
at the Zoo, but now no more, was irritable. But we 
cannot argue from a captive to a freely roaming beast. 
Legend has encrusted the rhinoceros as thickly as 
Nature has. Its horns make beautiful translucent 
drinking vessels, which so lately as the year 1762 were 
reputed as test of poison. “‘ When wine is poured 
therein,” wrote Dr. Brookes in that year, “it will rise, 
ferment, and seem to boil; but when mixed with poison 
it cleaves in two, which experiment has been seen by 
thousands of people.” Our second best diarist, John 
Evelyn, saw during his travels in Italy a fountain 
which was kept sweet and free from poison by a 
rhinoceros horn. It is held, too, that the branch cast 
into the waters of Marah was a horn brought with him 
by Moses from Egypt. As for unicorn legends, they are 
manifold. But it always seems to us that the rhinoceros 
was not the prototype of the “lufar unicorne.” That 
fabulous beast, as every one knows, is compounded, at 
least in heraldry, of the body of a horse well maned and 
of the horn of a narwhal. To get that out of a pon- 
derous rhinoceros is difficult even for the imaginative 
natural history of the ancients. No rhinoceros could 
slumber upon a maiden’s breast, unless indeed the 
maiden were of the Barnum and Bailey kind. Much 
more likely is it that the unicorn is a small and graceful 
gazelle with, as rarely but occasionally happens as a 
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