‘162 MAMMALS

ass, the Asiatic one, 2. hemzonus, with short ears, and
the African one, &. asznus, with long ears, both of
them very handsome animals, and far better-looking
than ‘the wild fiery mustang of the prairies, or ‘the
noble tarpan of the Asian wilds. The ordinary
donkey is a domesticated African ass, and the
occasional stripes on its legs are ancestral, just as
are the occasional stripes on the horse. All these
animals, it may be as well to note, are very short in
the humerus and femur, so that their elbows and
knees are close up to the body. What is generally
called the horse’s knee is really his wrist, and his
hock is his heel.

The species of rhinoceros were formerly very
numerous and widely distributed over the Old World
and the New. There were rhinoceroses even in the
Thames Valley and on what is now the- coast of
Norfolk. Nowadays they are found only in Africa
and Southern Asia and Malaysia; and these are
rapidly disappearing, for the rhinoceros is a big,
conspicuous brute, much less terrible than he looks,
and easily shot ; his ‘armour’ being penetrable even
with a pocket-knife when he is alive, although har-
dening till it is nearly bullet-proof when stripped and
dried. In Asia there are three species, R/znoceros
unicornts, the Indian single-horned one, R. sondazcus,
the smaller single-horned one found from Bengal
to Borneo, and the Sumatran, A. sumatrensts, which
has two horns and is found at intervals from Burma
to Borneo. In Africa there are also three species, all
with two horns. One of these is the white or square-
mouthed rhinoceros, 2. szmus, now nearly extinct.