The traveller Pallas gives a very interesting account of a _Rhinoceros
tichorhinus_ which he saw, with his own eyes, taken out of the ice in
which its skin, hair, and flesh had been preserved. It was in December,
1771, that the body of the Rhinoceros was observed buried in the frozen
sand upon the banks of the Viloui, a river which discharges itself into
the Lena below Yakutsk, in Siberia, in 64° north latitude. “I ought to
speak,” the learned naturalist says, “of an interesting discovery which
I owe to the Chevalier de Bril. Some Yakouts hunting this winter near
the Viloui found the body of a large unknown animal. The Sieur Ivan
Argounof, inspector of the Zimovic, had sent on to Irkutsk the head and
a fore and hind foot of the animal, all very well preserved.” The Sieur
Argounof, in his report, states that the animal was half buried in the
sand; it measured as it lay three ells and three-quarters Russian in
length, and he estimated its height at three and a half; the animal,
still retaining its flesh, was covered with skin which resembled tanned
leather; but it was so decomposed that he could only remove the fore and
hind foot and the head, which he sent to Irkutsk, where Pallas saw them.
“They appeared to me at first glance,” he says, “to belong to a
Rhinoceros; the head especially was quite recognisable, since it was
covered with its leathery skin, and the skin had preserved all its
external characters, and many short hairs. The eyelids had even escaped
total decay, and in the cranium here and there, under the skin, I
perceived some matter which was evidently the remains of putrefied
flesh. I also remarked in the feet the remains of the tendons and
cartilages where the skin had been removed. The head was without its
horn, and the feet without hoofs. The place of the horn, and the raised
skin which had surrounded it, and the division which existed in both the
hind and fore feet, were evident proofs of its being a Rhinoceros. In a
dissertation addressed to the Academy of St. Petersburg, I have given a
full account of this singular discovery. I give there reasons which
prove that a Rhinoceros had penetrated nearly to the Lena, in the most
northern regions, and which have led to the discovery of the remains of
other strange animals in Siberia. I shall confine myself here to a
description of the country where these curious remains were found, and
to the cause of their long preservation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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