The name _Rhinoceros_ ([Greek: rhin], nose, and [Greek: keras], horn) indicates at once the peculiarity which at the first glance distinguishes him from the other Pachyderms. He carries, in fact, upon the arch formed by his nasal bones one or two solid, curved, and sharp-pointed horns, which serve him as very formidable weapons. His ears are upright, pointed, and moderately large; the eyes small and half closed. The coarse thick skin, knotty or granulated on its surface, is of such tenacity and impenetrability about the short thick legs and ungainly body, that it resists the claws of the lion or the tiger, the sword or the shot of the hunter. It hangs about the neck in several large plaits or folds; another fold passes from the shoulders to the fore-legs, and another from the hind part of the back to the thighs. He has a moderately large and long head, a protruding upper lip, and a depressed skull. His manners are fierce, but not aggressive; he leads a lethargic life, and wallows on the marshy banks of lakes and rivers, where grows the vegetable food on which he exclusively feeds. He usually measures about twelve feet in length from the tip of the nose to the insertion of the tail; his height is about seven feet; and the girth of his body is nearly equal to its length! The appearance of the Rhinoceros upon the globe was probably contemporaneous with that of the Proboscideæ. Fossil remains of the animal have been discovered in the temperate, and even the cold countries of Asia and Europe. In 1772 an entire rhinoceros, admirably preserved, was found embedded on the banks of a Siberian river, in the ancient frozen soil. Now-a-days he is exclusively confined to the tropical regions of the Old World. He lives a solitary life in the dense jungles of India, the Sunda Islands, Central and Austral Africa. Naturalists distinguish six varieties--the Rhinoceros of India, the one-horned Rhinoceros of Java, the two-horned Rhinoceros of Sumatra, the unarmed Rhinoceros, the two-horned Rhinoceros of Africa, and the Rhinoceros of Bruce. The Indian Rhinoceros attains the height of five to six feet, and the length of seven to nine feet. He confines his wanderings in the main to the Trans-Gangetic peninsula. He has but one horn, and some dim tradition of this animal may probably have suggested the long popular fable of the mysterious Unicorn. His skin, of a dusky brown, is so singularly thick that it would have rendered all movement impossible on the part of the quadruped, if Nature had not disposed it in deep folds corresponding to the principal articulations. Thus he seems to the eye caparisoned in a body-armour of thick leather, formed in several pieces; and in truth his impervious hide constitutes a cuirass against which even musket-balls strike innocuously. Hence he dreads not the attacks of any of the Carnivora.