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Updated: June 18, 2025
As compared with their early Tertiary representatives' some of our modern mammals have increased seven or eight-fold in brain-capacity. While the horses and tapirs and rhinoceroses were being gradually evolved from the primitive types, the Artiodactyl branch of the Ungulates the pigs, deer, oxen, etc. were also developing. We must dismiss them briefly.
Some things in it require explanation, but the numbers of animals said to have been met with and killed are by no means improbable, considering the amount of large game then in the country. Two other gentlemen hunting in the same region destroyed in one season no fewer than seventy-eight rhinoceroses alone.
The Irishman intended to push forward through Zululand to a region some distance to the northward, where elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami abounded, so that he might obtain a supply of ivory as well as of skins and any other valuable products of the country which he might discover.
When the rhinoceros in its wild state has a little calf, as its young one is called, the little one runs along in front of the mother at the sound of any danger, and the mother follows in a wallowing trot behind, so that if necessary her body could guard it from danger. Sometimes hunters shoot rhinoceroses and kill them, and then eat part of them, which they say is very good, just like beef.
White sheep are killed in the Tarentino by eating Hypericum Criscum, while black sheep escape: white rhinoceroses are said to perish from eating Euphorbia Candelabrum; and white horses are said to suffer from poisonous food, where colored ones escape.
A thick jungle composed of such bushes is perfectly impenetrable to any animals but elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffaloes; and should the clothes of a man become entangled in such thorns, either they must give way, or he must remain a prisoner.
They remind us chiefly of tropical animals; indeed, Tigers, Hyenas, Rhinoceroses, Hippopotamuses, Mastodons, and Elephants had their home in countries which now belong to the Cold Temperate Zone, showing that the climate in these latitudes was much milder then than it is at present. Bones of many of these animals were found in caverns in Germany, France, Italy, and England.
The guinea pig, as you know, was as big as our elephants, and the elephant dear little pet was the size of the silly, tiny, black-and-tan dogs that ladies carry sometimes in their muffs. The rabbits were about the size of our rhinoceroses, and all about the wild parts of the island they had made their burrows as big as railway tunnels. The dormouse, of course, was the biggest of all the creatures.
The prince remained alone on the brink of the reservoir with rather somewhat more hope of success than he had felt of overcoming his task of the preceding night; nor was he disappointed, for about midnight a voice was heard exclaiming, "Prince, benevolence is never unrequited:" and, lo! the plain was filled with elephants, rhinoceroses, camels, dromedaries, lions, tigers, and every species of wild beasts, in such immense droves as could not be numbered, who, advancing in turn to the reservoir, drank in such quantity that it, at length, was completely emptied, and became as dry as if just finished.
He informs me, that in latitude 24 degrees, in one day's march with the bullock-waggons, he saw, without wandering to any great distance on either side, between one hundred and one hundred and fifty rhinoceroses, which belonged to three species: the same day he saw several herds of giraffes, amounting together to nearly a hundred; and that, although no elephant was observed, yet they are found in this district.
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