It is the rhinoceros, or nose horn, that ought to have hippo (horse) in his name. He is a very distant relation of the horse. He has teeth like a horse and a three-toed foot. The horse, today, has only one toe in a solid hoof, but in his leg are two splints where, ages and ages ago, there were two more toes that dwindled away and disappeared. No horse, wild or tame, or any of his near relatives, the zebras, wild ponies or donkeys, has a horn. So, perhaps, you will not be surprised to learn that a rhinoceros' horn isn't a horn at all, nor even a tusk. It is more like a corn.

This is the difference: A tusk is an overgrown tooth, a horn grows from the bones of the head, a finger nail is a sort of horny substance that grows from the flesh, a corn is a thickening of the skin. You get a corn on a toe where a shoe rubs or pinches. In rooting about for his food, or in fighting, the rhinoceros may have bumped his nose and kept on bumping it until a "corn" grew there. That "corn" is really a tuft of stiff bristles cemented together with a kind of horny glue. Around the base of it the thick hide grows in leathery folds, and the outer layer of the "corn" often peels back in shreds, like the rough bark fibre on a cocoanut shell. If you watch a rhinoceros in a cage, you may see his nose-horn move when he wrinkles his thick, over-hanging lip and forehead.

Except that he is a huge, nearly hairless beast who likes to wallow in the mud and water, the rhinoceros is not in the least like the hippopotamus. His legs, while thick, are longer, and lift his body higher from the ground. His head tapers to a pointed muzzle, and he has the upright, nervous ears of the horse. A regular wild horse in armor he is, for his thick, leathery skin is laid on him in folds that overlap at the natural joints of his body. Having such a weapon right between and below his eyes, where it is always in sight, the rhinoceros doesn't miss many chances of using his nose-horn. He doesn't try to avoid trouble as the more timid hippopotamus does.

The rhinoceros is a grazing animal, too, but does not find his food in the water. He feeds by night on wooded hillsides, in the brush or on swamps, and uses his nose-horn to pry up roots and his horse teeth to bite off grass. During the heat of the day he often takes a cool bath and rolls in the mud. Very likely he goes into the water many times for the same reason as the elephant. He is tormented by flies and stinging insects. Like the elephant he, too, has a feathered friend. Isn't it odd that the rhinoceros bird should also have a nose-horn? He is Mr. Horn Bill. This bird travels around on the animal's back and picks the insects out of the folds of skin. He has that choice feeding ground all to himself, for the rhinoceros baby doesn't ride on its mama's back. Papa pushes the baby along in front of him with his horn, as if he were in a baby cab, on wheels.

The rhinoceros can hear and smell well, but, like the hippopotamus, his small eyes are very dim. The bird on his back often gives him the first warning of danger by uttering a loud cry. At that the animal plunges into the brush or makes for the nearest water. He can out-run a horse, but he doesn't run away, as a rule. He merely chooses his own place to fight. He runs into a pool or river, rolls over in the water, and heaves up, his huge, black, armored sides dripping.

Ten feet long and seven high, with a dagger-like curved weapon three or four feet long on his nose, the bull rhinoceros is a monster. He tosses his huge, horned nose, sniffs and snorts and lowers his head for the charge like a wild boar. Knowing that he sees badly and charges straight, a skilled horseman can dodge him. A lion leaps over him, tucks his tail between his legs and sneaks away. An elephant that stands twice as high, often weighs but very little more, and is no match at all for this big brute. The rhinoceros can run his nose under the elephant's body and kill him with one stroke of his dagger horn.

Here is something about the rhinoceros that is very interesting. Thousands and thousands of years ago enormous hairy rhinoceroses with two nose-horns and shaggy manes, roamed over all the colder parts of Europe and America with the giant hairy elephant. The bones of a great many of them have been dug up on the banks of the Upper Missouri River. Just think! Enormous two-horned and two-tusked woolly beasts, bigger and fiercer than any elephants and rhinoceroses of today, may have uprooted trees and cropped wild grass on the very pasture where your pretty Jersey cow eats clover.

So there's another thing to help you remember Mr. Nose Horn. He was once an American, and might even feel at home here in some places, the hot swamps of Florida, for instance. Mr. River Horse, who is really a water-pig, is a stranger.

Now do you think you will ever forget " how to say their names, and which is which?" See Hippopotamus, page 875; Rhinoceros, page 1606.