The rhinoceros, without being ferocious, carnivorous, or even very wild, is, nevertheless, untractable. He is of the nature of a hog, blunt and brutal, without intellects, sentiment, or docility. He is subject to fits of fury, that nothing can calm; for the rhinoceros, which Emanuel, king of Portugal, sent to the Pope in 1513, was the cause of the ship being destroyed in which he was transporting; and that which we saw at Paris was drowned in the same manner, in going over to Italy. These animals, also like the hog, are much inclined to wallow in the mire. They like damp and marshy places, and seldom leave the banks of rivers. They are found in Asia and Africa, in Bengal, Siam, Laos, Mogul, Sumatra, Java, in Abyssinia, in Ethiopia, in the country of the Anzicos, and as far as the Cape of Good Hope. But in general the species is not so numerous, or so universally spread, as that of the elephant. The female brings forth but one young, and that at a great distance of time. In the first month the rhinoceros is not much bigger than a large dog; he has no horn when first brought forth, although the rudiment of it is seen in the foetus. When he is two years old his horn is not above an inch long; and in his sixth year it is about ten inches; and as some of these horns are very near four feet long, it appears that they grow till the half, or, perhaps, during the whole life of the animal, which must be long, since the rhinoceros, described by Dr. Parsons, was not come to half his growth at two years old, which makes it probable that this animal, like man, lives to seventy or eighty years. Without the capacity of being useful like the elephant, the rhinoceros is equally hurtful from the prodigious devastation which he makes in the fields. He has no one advantageous quality while alive. His flesh is excellent, according to the taste of the Indians and Negroes: Kolbe says, he has often eaten it with pleasure. His skin makes the best and hardest leather in the world; and not only his horn, but all the other parts of his body, and even his blood, urine, and excrements, are esteemed as antidotes against poison, or remedies against several diseases. These antidotes, or remedies, extracted from different parts of the rhinoceros, are of the same use in the dispensatory of the Indians, as the theriaca is in that of Europe. Probably, all those virtues are imaginary:--But how many things are held in great estimation, which have no value but in opinion!