The Animal World, A Book of Natural History Part 26

"No one has ever yet settled the question whether he is a horse or an a.s.s, probably because he represents an animal truly between the two. His head is graceful, his body light, his legs slender and fleet, yet his ears are long and a.s.s-like; he has narrow hoofs, and a tail with a tuft at the end like all the a.s.s tribe; his color is a yellow brown, and he has a short dark mane and a long dark stripe down his back as a donkey has. Living often on the high plateaus, sometimes as much as fifteen hundred feet above the sea, this 'child of the steppes' travels in large companies even as far as the rich meadows of Central Asia; in summer wandering in green pastures, and in winter seeking the hunger-steppes where st.u.r.dy plants grow. And when Autumn comes the young steeds go off alone to the mountain heights to survey the country around and call wildly for mates, whom, when found, they will keep close to them through all the next year, even though they mingle with thousands of others.

"Till recent years the _Equus hemionus_ was the only truly wild horse known, but in the winter of 1879-80 the Russian traveler Przhevalsky brought back from Central Asia a much more horse-like animal, called by the Tartars kertag, and by the Mongols statur. It is a clumsy, thick-set, whitish-gray creature with strong legs and a large, heavy, reddish-colored head; its legs have a red tint down to the knees, beyond which they are blackish down to the hoofs. But the ears are small, and it has the broad hoofs of the true horse, and warts on the hind legs, which no animal of the a.s.s tribe has. This horse, like the kiang, travels in small troops of from five to fifteen, led through the wildest parts of the Dsungarian desert, between the Altai and Tian-Shan Mountains, by an old stallion. They are extremely shy, and see, hear, and smell very quickly, so that they are off like lightning whenever anything approaches them.

"So having traveled over America, Europe, and Asia, was my quest ended?

No; for from the dreary Asiatic deserts my thoughts wandered to a far warmer and more fertile land, where between the Blue Nile and the Red Sea rise the lofty highlands of Abyssinia, among which the African wild a.s.s, the probable ancestor of our donkeys, feeds in troops on the rich gra.s.ses of the slopes, and then onward to the bank of a river in Central Africa where on the edge of a forest, with rich pastures beyond, elephants and rhinoceroses, antelopes and buffaloes, lions and hyenas, creep down in the cool of the evening to slake their thirst in the flowing stream. There I saw the herds of zebras in all their striped beauty coming down from the mountain regions to the north, and mingling with the darker-colored but graceful quaggas from the southern plains, and I half grieved at the thought how these untamed and free rovers are being slowly but surely surrounded by man closing in upon them on every side.

"I might now have traveled still farther in search of the onager, or wild a.s.s of the Asiatic and Indian deserts, but at this point a more interesting and far wider question presented itself, as I flung myself down on the moor to ponder over the early history of all these tribes.

"Where have they all come from? Where shall we look for the =first= ancestors of these wild and graceful animals? For the answer to this question I had to travel back to America, to those Western United States where Professor Marsh has made such grand discoveries in horse history.

For there, in the very country where horses were supposed never to have been before the Spaniards brought them a few centuries ago, we have now found the true birthplace of the equine race.

"Come back with me to a time so remote that we cannot measure it even by hundred of thousands of years, and let us visit the territories of Utah and Wyoming. Those highlands were very different then from what they are now. Just risen out of the seas of the Cretaceous Period, they were then clothed with dense forests of palms, tree-ferns, and screw-pines, magnolias and laurels, interspersed with wide-spreading lakes, on the margins of which strange and curious animals fed and flourished. There were large beasts with teeth like the tapir and the bear, and feet like the elephant; and others far more dangerous, half bear, half hyena, prowling around to attack the clumsy paleotherium or the anoplotherium, something between a rhinoceros and a horse, which grazed by the waterside, while graceful antelopes fed on the rich gra.s.s. And among these were some little animals no bigger than foxes, with four toes and a splint for the fifth, on their front feet, and three toes on the hind ones.

"These clumsy little animals, whose bones have been found in the rocks of Utah and Wyoming, have been called _Eohippus_, or horse of the dawn, by naturalists. They were animals with real toes, yet their bones and teeth show that they belonged to the horse tribe, and already the fifth toe common to most other toed animals was beginning to disappear.

"This was in the Eocene Period, and before it pa.s.sed away with its screw-pines and tree-ferns, another rather larger animal, called _Orohippus_, had taken the place of the small one, and he had only four toes on his front feet. The splint had disappeared, and as time went on still other animals followed, always with fewer toes, while they gained slender fleet legs, together with an increase in size and in gracefulness. First one as large as a sheep (_Mesohippus_) had only three toes and a splint. Then the splint again disappeared, and one large and two dwindling toes only remained, till finally these two became mere splints, leaving one large toe or hoof with almost imperceptible splints, which may be seen on the fetlock of a horse's skeleton.

"You must notice that a horse's foot really begins at the point which we call his knee in the front legs, and at his hock in his hind legs. His true knee and elbow are close up to the body. What we call his foot or hoof is really the end of the strong, broad, middle toe covered with a hoof, and farther up his foot we can feel two small splints, which are remains of two other toes.

"Meanwhile, during these long succeeding ages while the foot was lengthening out into a slender limb, the animals became larger, more powerful, and more swift, the neck and head became longer and more graceful, the brain-case larger in front, and the teeth decreased in number, so that there is now a large gap between the biting teeth and the grinding teeth of a horse. Their slender limbs too became more flexible and fit for running and galloping, till we find the whole skeleton the same in shape, though not in size, as in our own horses and a.s.ses now.

"They did not, however, during all this time remain confined to America, for, from the time when they arrived at an animal called _Miohippus_, or lesser horse, which came after _Mesohippus_ and had only three toes on each foot, we find their remains in Europe, where they lived in company with the giraffes, opossums, and monkeys which roamed over these parts in those ancient times. Then a little later we find them in Africa and India; so that the horse tribe, represented by creatures about as large as donkeys, had spread far and wide over the world.

"And now, curiously enough, they began to forsake, or to die out in, the land of their birth. Why they did so we do not know; but while in the old world as a.s.ses, quaggas, and zebras, and probably horses, they flourished in Asia, Europe, and Africa, they certainly died out in America, so that ages afterward, when that land was discovered, no animal of the horse tribe was found in it.

"And the true horse, where did he arise? Born and bred probably in Central Asia from some animal like the kulan, or the kertag, he proved too useful to savage tribes to be allowed his freedom, and it is doubtful whether in any part of the world he escaped subjection. In England he probably roamed as a wild animal till the savages, who fed upon him, learned in time to put him to work; and when the Romans came they found the Britons with fine and well-trained horses.

"Yet though tamed and made to know his master, he has, as we have seen, broken loose again in almost all parts of the world--in America on the prairies and pampas, in Europe and Asia on the steppes, and in Australia in the bush. And even in Great Britain, where so few patches of uncultivated land still remain, the young colts of Dartmoor, Exmoor, and Shetland, though born of domesticated mothers, seem to a.s.sert their descent from wild and free ancestors as they throw out their heels and toss up their heads with a shrill neigh, and fly against the wind with streaming manes and outstretched tails as the kulan, the tarpan, and the zebra do in the wild desert or gra.s.sy plain."

CHAPTER XVII

THE ELEPHANTS, RHINOCEROSES, HIPPOPOTAMUSES, AND WILD SWINE

There are three reasons, perhaps, why elephants interest us so greatly.

The first is their enormous size. They are by far the largest of all the animals which live upon land. "Jumbo," for instance, the famous African elephant that we in the United States saw in the last century, was nearly twelve feet in height, and weighed more than six tons. A height of ten feet is quite common.

Next, there is their wonderful docility. When wild, no doubt, they are often very fierce and savage. Yet they are easily tamed; and it is a strange sight to see one of these giant creatures walking about with a load of children upon its back, and meekly obeying the lightest word of a man whom it could crush to death in a moment by simply placing its foot upon him.

And then, once more, there is that marvelous trunk, so strong that it can tear down great branches from the trees, and yet so delicate that it can pick up the smallest sc.r.a.p of food from the ground. When the elephant wishes to feed, it seizes the food with its trunk and pokes it into its mouth. When it wishes to drink, it fills the same organ with water, and then squirts the contents down its throat. If it should be hot, it can take a shower-bath by squirting water over its body instead.

And it breathes through its trunk and smells with it as well. So this wonderful member is used for a great many different purposes.

As it is so valuable, the elephant takes very great care of its trunk, always curling it up out of harm's way, for example, if it should find itself in any danger.

Two different kinds of elephants are known, one of which is found in Africa and the other in Asia.

THE AFRICAN ELEPHANT

You can easily tell the African elephant by the great size of his ears, which are so large that a man might almost hide himself behind one of them. "Jumbo's" ear, indeed, measured no less than five feet five inches from side to side. When the animal is excited these enormous ears stand out at right angles to the head. Then the legs are much longer than those of the Indian elephant, while the trunk, instead of having one finger-like projection at the tip, has two, one in front and one behind.

Both the male and female animal, as a rule, possess tusks, while in Indian elephants these weapons are only occasionally present in the male, and hardly ever in the female.

The tusks of the male elephant, however, are always much larger than those of his mate, and sometimes they grow to a very great size. A length of nine feet is not very uncommon, while tusks ten feet long, or even more, have sometimes been recorded. Generally one tusk is several inches shorter than the other, having been worn down in digging for the roots on which the animal is fond of feeding; for elephants seem to dig with one of the tusks only, and never with both.

The ivory of which these tusks are composed is so valuable that the African elephant has been most terribly persecuted, and in many districts where it was formerly plentiful it has disappeared altogether.

It lives as a rule in herds, which seek the thickest parts of the forest during the day, and come out at night to search for food and water. And even a small herd of elephants will sometimes do a great deal of damage, for they will uproot trees eighteen or even twenty feet high, in order to feed upon the foliage of the upper branches, or snap off the stems quite close to the ground. When the tree is a large one, it is said that two elephants will unite in breaking it down.

You would think that a herd of elephants would be very conspicuous even in the thick forest, wouldn't you? Yet all hunters unite in saying that as long as they remain still it is almost impossible to see them, while they make their way through the bushes so silently that even when they are moving it is not at all easy to hear them.

THE INDIAN ELEPHANT

This elephant seldom exceeds nine feet in height at the shoulder, although larger examples are sometimes found. It lives in the thick jungle in herds of forty or fifty, which sometimes wander by night into cultivated ground, and do terrible damage to the crops. Now and then, however, a male elephant will live entirely alone. These solitary animals are always very fierce, and will rush out and attack any one who may pa.s.s by. For this reason they are known as "rogues."

The Indian elephant is very often tamed, and is taught to perform all kinds of heavy work, such as dragging timber or piling logs. It is also used for riding, a howdah with several seats being placed upon its back, while it is guided by a native driver, called a mahout, who sits upon its neck and directs its movements by means of a spiked hook. It is largely employed, too, in hunting the tiger. But for this purpose it has to be most carefully trained, for elephants are naturally very much afraid of tigers, and even after a long course of instruction will sometimes take to flight when the furious animal springs at them with open jaws and eyes flaming with rage.

Elephants in India are mostly captured by being driven into a large keddah, or enclosure of stout posts, from which they are unable to make their escape. In this way a large herd of the huge animals are often taken prisoners together.

Next in size to the elephants are the great creatures known as rhinoceroses, which are found both in Africa and in Asia. Five different kinds are known altogether, but we shall only be able to tell you about two.

THE INDIAN RHINOCEROS

In this animal the hide falls into great folds upon the shoulders and in front of the thighs, while there are smaller folds upon the neck and the hind quarters. The sides of the body are marked with a large number of round projections, sometimes as much as an inch in diameter, which look very much like the rivets in the iron plates of a boiler.

When fully grown this animal stands rather over five feet in height at the shoulder.

The Indian rhinoceros has only one horn, which is generally about a foot long. This horn, strange to say, is not connected in any way with the bones of the skull, but is really a growth from the skin, although there is a bony prominence under it on which it is set. By means of a sharp knife, it could be cut away without difficulty. But it is a very formidable weapon, and some of the rhinoceroses with longer horns have been known to rush at a mounted hunter with lowered head, and then to strike upward with such terrible force that the horn has actually pierced the horse's body, and entered the thigh of the rider. Sometimes a rhinoceros will rush along with its head bent downward so far that the horn cuts a deep furrow in the ground.

This animal is chiefly found in the swampy parts of the great gra.s.s-jungles of India. It is very fond of taking a mud-bath, from which it comes out with its whole body thickly caked with clay. This serves as a great protection from flies and other insects, which persecute it terribly, forcing their way under the thick folds of hide at the shoulders and thighs, where the skin is thinner, and driving it nearly mad by the irritation of their bites.

In spite of its great size this rhinoceros is a rather timid animal, and nearly always runs away when it is attacked. But if it is wounded or brought to bay it becomes a terrible foe, charging with fury again and again, and striking savagely with its horn, and sometimes with its tusks as well.

The African rhinoceroses are without the folds of skin which are found in the Indian species, and have two horns on the head instead of one.

Sometimes these horns are of very great length. We have seen a walking-stick that might serve a very tall man, which was cut from the core of such a horn.

THE COMMON RHINOCEROS

This is the better known of the two African species, and is found in almost all the wilder districts from Abyssinia to Cape Colony. It lives in the thickest parts of the forest, breaking away the bushes and the lower branches of the trees so as to leave a clear s.p.a.ce perhaps fifteen or twenty feet in diameter. These retreats are called rhinoceros-houses, and the animals remain in them during the heat of the day.

The common rhinoceros is wonderfully quick and active for so large and heavy an animal, and is said to be able to overtake a man riding a fast horse. But it does not seem, as a rule, to be savage in disposition, and very seldom attacks a human foe. One great hunter tells us that although many rhinoceroses have advanced toward him to within twenty or thirty yards, they always ran away if he threw stones at them, or even if he waved his arms and shouted. When wounded, however, they will sometimes attack furiously. But they never think of looking for their enemy in a tree, and if he can climb on to a bough even three or four feet from the ground he is perfectly safe.

THE HYRAX