308 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol.90 



■of these are now in the collections of the National Museum, but the 

 fourth has never been definitely located. 



A history of the type specimen of Rhinoceros nebrascensis^ Leidy 

 {Hyracodon nebrascensis of modern nomenclature) by Drs. Horace 

 and Albert Wood ^ is so interesting that it is worth incorporating 

 here. I have extracted freely from their account as follows: 



Abel (1926)' discusses and figures a skull of Hyracodan "nebrascensis" with 

 badly worn teeth. This bears the "original" label: 



"Skull of Rhinoceros nebrascensis (Leidy) Loc: Coryell County, Texas 

 A. R. Roessler collected 1863." 



Abel states that this is the original of Leidy's figured specimen (1853, PL 15, 

 Figs. 1-2) from the "Big Bad Lands," and that the label as to collector and 

 locality is, therefore, wrong. There have been unpublished intimations that 

 ithis is not Leidy's specimen, belonging to the Smithsonian Institution (Leidy, 

 1853, p. 14), collected by Dr. D. D. Owen. However, comparison of the specimen 

 with Leidy's figures, which are of his usual high standard of accuracy, leaves 

 no possible doubt that they are the same, even the breaks being identical. This 

 specimen was part of a shipment of allegedly Texas fossils sent to k. k. geologische 

 Reichsanstalt of Vienna (now the geologische Bundesanstalt) by A. R. Roessler 

 iin 1868 (Schloenbach, 1868). 



Wliat happened may be summarized from the Wood brothers' 

 account as follows : 



Dr. B. F. Shumard, who had been on the Owen survey, was appointed 

 State geologist of Texas in 1858, and among his subordinates was A. R. 

 Roessler. In 1860 Shumard announced the discovery in Washington 

 County, Tex., of fossil materials equivalent in age to those of the Big 

 Bad Lands, and, as stated by the Wood brothers, "It is entirely reason- 

 able to suppose that he borrowed typical Badlands material for com- 

 parison from the collection of the Owen survey with which he had 

 been associated, although there is no direct proof that he did so." 

 On the outbreak of the Civil War, Shumard, Roessler, and others 

 went north. From the evidence presented it appears clear that 

 Roessler removed certain specimens and maps from the Texas survey 

 and that about October 1868 Roessler, who was an Austrian, sent a 

 -collection of vertebrate specimens to the Geologische Reichsanstalt, 

 among which was the type of Hyracodon nebrascensis. 



Professor Abel has since presented the Hyracodon skull to the 

 American Museum of Natural History, where it bears the catalog 

 number 22617. 



1 Merrill, George P., Catalogue of the type and figured specimens of fossils, minerals, 

 rocks, and ores in the Department of Geology, United States National Museum. U. S. 

 Nat. Mus. Bull. 53, pt. 2 (Fossil vertebrates, etc.), p. 60, 1907. The type is listed, but there 

 was some doubt that the specimen was the one that Leidy had described and figured. 

 It is now known not to be the type. 



* Wood, Horace Elmer, 2d, and Wood, Albert Elmer, Mid-Tertiary vertebrates from the 

 •lexas Coastal Plain : Fact and fable. Amer. Midi. Nat., vol. 18. pp. 129-146, illus., 19.37. 



s Abel, O., Paleont. Zeitschr., vol. 8, pp. 241-242, 1926. 



