"'The child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is blithe and bonny and good and gay;'
"and Sunday is the golden clasp that binds the Weeks together."
"Hurrah for grandpa!" shouted all the young folks, hastening to thank him for their gifts. And then, as the sun's great red eye was blinking sleepily in the west, clinging to the hands and coat of the old man, they wended their way from beneath the protecting branches of the hospitable woods.
[THE RHINOCEROS.]
When the rhinoceros is at home—where it is probable he had much rather be than dragged around the country in a gaudily painted cart as one of the attractions of a menagerie, or confined in some zoological garden, where he is prevented from goring the small boy who gazes at him as impudently as he pleases—he lives in Asia or Africa. Perhaps it would be more proper to say that he fights in those countries, for the greater portion of his long life is made up of combats with his relatives or any other animals who come in his way.
In Africa there are four varieties, distinguished by the natives as follows: the borele, or black rhinoceros, the keitloa, or two-horned black, the moohooho, or common white, and the kaboba, or long-horned white rhinoceros. The first two are smaller but more fierce than the white ones, and are quite as willing to hunt the sportsman as to be hunted. The largest of the Africans is the long-horned white rhinoceros, which has been found eighteen feet six inches in length, and the circumference of its broad back and low-hanging belly is very nearly the same number of feet and inches.
There are three species of the Asiatic rhinoceros, two of which have but one horn, while the third has two. These are much smaller than their brothers from Africa, and their skin hangs in folds.
Mr. Greenwood says that the hunters and writers who have asserted that a bullet will hardly pierce this animal's hide are mistaken, and that a rifle-ball will penetrate the loose, baggy covering with little or no difficulty. The belief that the hide was so tough probably arose from experiments made with that which had been toughened almost like horn by a process employed by the natives, who make from it whip-stocks and walking-canes.
Mr. Gordon Cumming, the celebrated hunter, in speaking of the largest African species, says: "It is about as large around as it is long, while the body sets so low on its legs that a tall man a-tiptoe could see across its back. Attached to its blunt nose—not to the bone, but merely set in the skin with a net-work of muscles to hold it—is a horn more or less curved, hard as steel, sharp, and more than a yard long, and immediately behind this is a little horn, equally sharp, and nearly straight." His eyes are very small, and as useful to him by night as by day. His ears are long, pointed, and tipped with a few bristles, which, with a tuft at the end of his tail, make up all the semblance of hair he possesses.