The rhinoceros shewn at the fair of St Germain, that which the Count de Buffon and Mr Edwards saw, kept clean in a stable for several years, I shall believe had neither worms nor scolopendræ upon it, neither does this officer of the Shaftesbury report it had; but he says, that one covered with mud, in which it had been weltering, had upon it animals that are commonly found in that mud; and this neither Mr Parsons nor Mr Edwards, nor the Count de Buffon, ever had an opportunity of verifying.
Chardin[44] says, that the Abyssinians tame and train the rhinoceros to labour. This is an absolute fable; besides, that we have reason to believe the animal is not capable of instruction, neither history not tradition ever gave the smallest reason to make us believe this, nor is there any motive for attempting the experiment, more than for believing it ever was accomplished. Tractable as the elephant, is, the Abyssinians never either tamed or instructed him; they never made use of beasts in war, nor would their country permit this training; so much the contrary, as we have already seen, that Ptolemy Philadelphus, and his successor Ptolemy Evergetes, did every thing in their power to persuade them to take the elephant alive, that they might tame them; but, as he was a principal part of their food, they never could succeed; and the latter prince, for this very purpose, made an expedition into Abyssinia, and was obliged to extirpate these hunters, and settle in their place a colony of his own at Arkeeko near Masuah, which he called Ptolemais Theron for that very reason; after which, he himself tells us in the long Greek inscription he left in the kingdom of Adel, that he had succeeded so far, by means of his colony of Greeks, as to train the Ethiopic elephant so as to make him superior to those in India; but this he could never do by employing Abyssinians.
It is a general observation made in every part where this animal resides, that he is indocile, and wants talents; his fierceness may be conquered, and we see, with a moderate degree of attention, he is brought to be quiet enough; but it is one thing to tame or conquer his fierceness, and another to make him capable of instruction; and it seems apparently allowed to be his case, that he has not capacity. A steady, uniform fierceness in the brute creation, is to be subdued by care and by hunger, this is not the case with him, his violent transports of fury upon being hungry, or not being served in the instant with food, seems to bar this manner of taming him. His behaviour is not that of any other animal; his revenge and fury are directed as much against himself as against an enemy; he knocks his head against the wall, or the manger, with a seeming intention to destroy himself, nay, he does destroy himself often. That sent from India to Emanuel king of Portugal, in the year 1513, and by him presented to the pope, was the cause the ship[45] that carried him was sunk and lost, and the one that was shewn in France purposely drowned itself going to Italy.
The rhinoceros and the elephant are the principal food of the Shangalla. The manner of preparing the flesh I have already described, and shall not repeat. He is ate too with great greediness by all the inhabitants of the low country, and Atbara. The most delicate part about him is supposed to be the soles of his feet, which are soft like those of a camel, and of a gristly substance; the rest of the flesh seems to resemble that of the hog, but is much coarser. It smells of musk, and is otherwise very tasteless; I should think it would be more so to the negroes and hunters, who eat it without salt. The only hair about it is at the tip of its tail; they are there few and scattered, but thick as the lowest wire of a harpsichord; ten of these, fastened side by side, at the distance of half an inch from each other, in the figure of a man’s hand, make a whip which will bring the blood every stroke.
This rhinoceros was thirteen feet from the nose to its anus; and very little less than seven feet when he stood, measuring from the sole of his fore-foot to the top of the shoulder. The first horn was fourteen inches. The second something less than thirteen inches. The flat part of the horn, where it was bare at its base, and divested of hair, was four inches, and the top two inches and a half broad. In the middle it was an inch and quarter thick; it was shaped like a knife; the back two inches, and, when turned, measured one fourth of an inch at the edge.
It seems now to be a point agreed upon by travellers and naturalists, that the famous animal, having one horn only upon his forehead, is the fanciful creation of poets and painters; to them I should willingly leave it, but a Swedish naturalist, Dr Sparman, who has lately published two volumes in quarto, in which he has distinguished himself by his low illiberal abuse of learned foreigners, as much as by the fulsome flattery he has bestowed on his own countrymen, has shewed an inclination to revive this antiquated fable. I do not, for my own part, believe the authority will be thought sufficient, or have many followers. The publisher, by way of apology, as suppose, for his rusticity and ill-manners, says, that he was employed in labour to earn a sufficient sum upon which to travel. What labour he applied to is not said; it was not a lucrative occupation surely, or the Doctor was not an able labourer, as the sum produced was but 38 dollars, and I really think his knowledge acquired seems to be pretty much in proportion to his funds.
Kolbe mentions what would seem a variety of the rhinoceros at the Cape. He says it has one horn upon its nose, and another upon his forehead. This the Count de Buffon thinks is untrue, and, from other circumstances of the narrative, supposes that Kolbe never saw this rhinoceros, and has described it only from hearsay. Though this, too, is Doctor Sparman’s opinion, yet, unwilling to let slip an opportunity of contradicting the Count de Buffon, he taxes it as an improper criticism upon this rhinoceros of Kolbe: he says the description is a just one, and that a man of the Count’s learning should have known that the forehead and nose of all animals were near each other. Although he has given a strange drawing of the skeleton of the head of a rhinoceros, where the nose and the forehead are very distinctly different, yet, in another drawing, he has figured his rhinoceros bicornis, with a head seemingly all nose, and much liker an ass than any thing we have seen pretended to be a rhinoceros ever since the time of Albert Durer. He pretends that, in his travels at the Cape, he saw an animal of this form, which had two horns upon his forehead, or his nose, whichever he pleases to call them. If such an animal does really exist, it is undoubtedly a new species; it has not the armour or plaited skin, seen in every rhinoceros till this time. He tells us a heap of wonderful stories about it, and claims the honour of being the first discoverer of it; and really, I believe, he is so far in the right, that if he can prove what he says to be true, there is no man that will pretend to dispute this point with him. Besides its having a skin without plaits, it has two horns on the forehead, so loose that they clash against one another, and make a noise when the animal is running: then he has one of these only that are moveable, which he turns to one side or the other when he chooses to dig roots; an imagination scarcely possible, I think, to any one who has ever seen a rhinoceros. With these loose and clashing horns he diverts himself by throwing a man and horse into the air; and, though but five feet high, at other times he throws a loaded, covered waggon, drawn by two oxen, over hedges into the fields.
Hyæna
London Publish’d Jan.y 19.th 1790 by G. Robinson & Co.