Le Rhinoceros.

Title

Le Rhinoceros.

Description

Very nice old colored copy of a rhinoceros. From Buffon's Galerie d'Histoire Naturelle 1879. Printed by Oudet.

ca. 1879

Artist

Frères (1833-1983)

Garnier Frères (1833 - 1983) was a well-known Parisian publishing house and bookshop. The publishing house was founded in 1833 by the brothers Auguste (1812 - 1887) and Hippolyte Garnier (1815 or 1816 - 1859). Their younger brother Pierre-Auguste (1807 - 1899) also joined the company. Another brother, Baptiste-Louis Garnier (1822 - 1893), joined in 1844. Another location was opened in 1853 in the former government hotel. The company profited from publishing inexpensive editions of French classics. The publishing program includes maps, travel guides, novels, historical works and essays. In June 1983, the company filed for bankruptcy and its shares were taken over by Presses de la Cité, a subsidiary of InfoMédia, which itself was dissolved in 2000.

Historical Description

Rhinoceroses are a family of odd-toed ungulates with five species still living today. Rhinos today live in Africa south of the Sahara and in South and Southeast Asia, both in savannah landscapes and in tropical rainforests in highlands and lowlands. However, the original distribution was much wider. The phylogenetically oldest species can be traced back to the Middle Eocene, around 50 million years ago, in Eurasia and North America. At the end of the last ice age, the rhinoceroses disappeared from northern Asia and Europe. In the course of their phylogenetic history, the various rhinoceros species occupied almost all ecological niches accessible to large, terrestrial mammals. Rhinos often live as solitary animals, but in savannahs they can also occur in small, matriarchally organized herds. Bulls are usually solitary and territorial. The individual animals live in narrowly defined territories. All rhinos feed exclusively on plant foods and are adapted to this diet with broad molars. However, the species have specialized in different plant foods. Four of the five rhino species living today prefer soft plant foods such as leaves, branches, twigs, buds and fruit.