times, Europe has seen no other than the Indian
animal, of which, within the last two centuries,
no fewer than a dozen individuals have been imported.
Both the peninsulas of India, from Bengal to Cochin China, but more especially that beyond the Ganges, are the native regions of this huge and uncouth quadruped. Like many others of this Order, he delights in the marshy borders of lakes and rivers, the damp and teeming forests, or the swampy jungles; immersing himself in the cool water and mud, or rolling and wallowing in the soft and oozy soil. "He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed and fens: the shady trees cover him with their shadow, the willows of the brook compass him about."[1] Some of our readers may have seen the individual, which for some years has been one of the treasures of the Zoological Gardens in the Regent’s Park, luxuriating in the bath with which his paddock is furnished, till his form is disguised beneath a thick coat of adhesive mud. When he can be seen, however, divested of such a covering, his skin. is found to be of a dull, deep purplish hue, marked with elevated round knobs, and other inequalities, and doubled into the thick folds already alluded to. There is no hair on the body, but on the tail and ears are a few stout and stiff horny bristles. Most visitors are disappointed at the appearance of the nasal horn in this specimen; it seems a coarse knob or lump, rather than a horn, the height being less than the diameter; but in fact, the animal has, ever since the first growth of the excrescence, constantly employed itself with
- ↑ Job xl. 21, 22.
