Eccentricities of the Animal Creation

From The Art and Popular Culture EncyclopediaJump to: navigation, search"Mr. Timbs, in his Eccentricities of the Animal Creation, 1869, tells us that a specimen of the one-horned variety was sent from India, to Emmanuel, King of Portugal, in the year 1513:- "The sovereign made a present of it to the pope; but the animal being seized during the passage with a fit of fury, occasioned the loss of the vessel in which it was transported." The first rhinoceros brought to England was in the year 1684. It is noticed by Evelyn in his Diary as the rhinoceros or unicorn. Another frequenter of the mudbanks of rivers in the Hippopota- East, the Hippopotamus, is thus described by mus. a Portuguese who travelled in Ethiopia and along the southern coast of Africa:— "In these rivers are many zouo or zoo, so they call the river-horses; greater then two of our horses together, with thick and short hinderlegs, having five clawes on each fore-foot, and foure on the hinder- foot; the footing large as it wer...