I do not know from what authority the author of the Encyclopedia[42] refers to the medals of Domitian, where the rhinoceros, he says, has a double horn; in all those that have been published, one horn only is figured. The use made of these horns is in the turning-loom; they are made into cups, and sold to ignorant people as containing antidotes against poisons; for this quality they generally make part of the presents of the Mogul and kings of Persia at Constantinople. Some modern naturalists have scarce yet given over this prejudice; which might have had a possibility of truth while the Galenical school flourished, and vegetable poisons were chiefly used; but it is absurd to suppose, that what might discover solanum, or deadly night-shade, upon contact, would have the like effect upon the application of arsenic; and from experience I can pronounce, that a cup of this is alike useless in the discovery or either. The handles of daggers are always, in Abyssinia, made of this horn, and these being the only works to which they are applied, is one of the reasons why I have said we should not rashly pronounce that the Asiatic rhinoceros has but one horn, merely because the foremost, or round horn, is the only one of the many that have been sent from India. In Abyssinia we seldom see the hunters at the pains to cut off or bring to market the second horn of the rhinoceros they have slain, because, being flat, in place of round, it has not diameter or substance enough to serve for the uses just spoken of; so that the round horn is the only one that appears either at Gondar or Cairo; and if we were to judge from this circumstance, the African rhinoceros is unicorn for the same reason as we do the Asiatic. The horns of this animal are hard and solid, of a reddish brown on the outside, a yellow inclining to gold within, and the heart a spot of black, which occupies the space of near two inches where the diameter of the horn is five. The surface takes a perfect polish, but when dried is very liable to splinter and crack. It likewise warps with heat, and scratches easily. And this was the reason that, though exceeding beautiful when new, it never would endure any time when made into the form of a snuff-box, but warped and split with the heat of the pocket, though this I believe was chiefly owing to the lamina, or flat pieces into which it was cut, being always left too thin. The foremost of these horns crook inward at the point, but by no means with so sudden a curve as is represented by the Count de Buffon. How sensible the animal is in this part, may be known from the accident I was eye-witness to in hunting him at Tcherkin, where a musquet-ball breaking off a point of that horn, gave him such a shock, as to deprive him for an instant of all appearance of life. Behind the foremost, or crooked horn, is the flat straight one, and again immediately behind that I have seen distinctly the rudiments of a third, and the horn full an inch long. If