largely to escape the Tiger, its most formidable foe in those regions of the world. Its quickness of senses enables it also to slip away with rapidity. It can proceed at a great pace when disturbed, and can readily push its way through obstacles. The young animal, like that of the American species, is dark brown with yellowish spots. It is stated by Mr. H. N. Ridley that the young animal lies during the hot part of the day under bushes, in which situation "its coat is so exactly like a patch of ground flecked with sunlight that it is quite invisible." It is interesting to note that here, as with some other animals, it is the young that are especially protected by such mechanisms. Moreover, some of the spots are round and some are more elongated, so that the resemblance to spots of sunlight which come in a direct and in a slanting direction is greatly increased. Even the colours of the adult are not so conspicuous when it is in its native haunts as might be supposed. The breaking up of the ground colour into tracts of two different colours prevent it from striking the eye so plainly as if it were of one colour throughout. "When lying down during the day it exactly resembles a grey boulder, and as it often lives near the rocky streams of the hill jungles, it is really nearly as invisible then as it was when it was speckled."[1]
Fam. 3. Rhinocerotidae.—This family is to be distinguished from the preceding by a number of characters, which though not universal are general. In the first place, there are commonly horns, or a horn, consisting of what appears to be an agglomeration of hair-like structures fixed upon a roughened patch of bone on the surface of the nasals. The incisors are diminished or defective, and the upper canines are often wanting. The molars and premolars are alike. The fore-feet are four- or three-toed, but are functionally tridactyle; the hind-feet are three-toed. The skeleton in this family is massive, and the limbs relatively short. The skull, as in the Tapirs, has a confluent orbit and temporal fossa. The upper lip is generally more or less prehensile; the body is as a rule—to which the Pleistocene Hairy Rhinoceros is of course an exception—rather sparsely covered with hair. In this feature the Rhinocerotidae contrast both with the Tapiridae and the Equidae. The family in reality contains but one existing genus, though three have been instituted, viz.
- ↑ Natural Science, vi. 1895, p. 161.
