HISTORY OF THE WORKS OF CUVIER. IGl 



itself. "We know at present four living species of the rhinoceros. The first is 

 the rhinoceros hicornis, of the Cape, which has molars, hut no incisors; the sec- 

 ond is the rhinoceros unicornis, of the Indies, which has incisors separatcnl from 

 the molars by a vacant space ; the third, the rhinoceros of Sumaira, appears to 

 form, as it were, an intermediate species between the two jn-eceding, lor it has 

 two horns like the rhinoceros of the Cape, and incisors like that of India. The 

 fourth is the rhinoceros unicornis of Java. Thus, there are four living species; 

 two having one horn, two having a second horn. Tlic number of fossil species 

 is not clearly established. The most celebrated, that whose nostrils are sepa- 

 rated by a bony partition, is found in Siberia, and in different parts of Ger- 

 many. The second, that whose nostrils are not separated by a bone, has been 

 thus far found only in Italy. Both species had two horns, and both appear to 

 have wanted incisors. As to other species, to the number of two or three, they 

 are as yet indicated only by a few fragments. It was to the species with parti- 

 tioned nostrils that the entire rhinoceros, withdrawn in 1770 from the ice on the 

 banks of the Wilhoui, belonged. This rhinoceros was covered with a thick coat 

 of hail", much like the fossil elephant, which seems to prove that both could live 

 at the north. "Thus," says M. Cuvier, "the cold countries which surround the 

 pole must have had, at the epoch which preceded the last revolution of the globe, 

 the great pachydermata, as they have now the great ruminants; the musk-ox, the 

 bison, the elk, the Canadian stag, the reindeer, the great carnivora, the white bear, 

 the morse, and so many large seals." 



We know, as yet, only the lower jaw of the elasmofheriitm, a fossil genus of 

 Siberia, discovered by M. Fischer, a genus entirely lost, like the mastodon, and 

 which, to judge from this jaw, must, in form and stature, have appi'oximated to 

 the rhinoceros. The genus cquus has left a great number of its bones, mingled 

 with those of the elephant and rhinoceros; but there has been thus far no osteo- 

 logical difference observed between these fossil species and the living species; 

 and what is not less singular is, that none has been found, at least none suffi- 

 ciently fixed and decided to be really characteristic, between the different living 

 species of this genus : the horse, the ass, the zebra, the quagga, &c. The bones 

 . of the hog have not yet been discovered in any strata so old as those of the fos- 

 sil elephant, horse, and rhinoceros. M. Cuvier gives, however, the osteology of 

 this genus, for his work has two objects equally important : the determination of 

 fossil species, and the elements and means of this determination ; that is to say, 

 the general laws of comparative osteology. Thns, it is only to establish this 

 great assemT)lage of osteological facts and laws that he gives the description of 

 the daman, for neither have the remains of this animal been found among fossil 

 bones. The daman, a small animal of Africa and Arabia, passed for a rodent. 

 M. Cuvier shows that it is a true pachyderm, and the one, indeed, which of all 

 others, approaches nearest to the rhinoceros. A genus not less singular than 

 that of the daman, and the osteology of which was not less unknown, is that of 

 the tapirs. These number at {)resent three living species : two of America and 

 one of the Indies ; and M. Cuvier describes several fossil animals related to the 

 tapirs.* 



The elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the mastodon, &c., as here 

 described, were the pachydermata of the alluvial formations. We see that all 

 their species are distinct from the living species; that they are all lost, and that 

 they were all destroyed at the same epoch and by the same catastroidie ; for their 

 bones are found in the sanie deposits, everywhere united and mingled together, 

 '^riie fossil pa<;hydermata which we are about to consider are all of another epoch, 

 and one much more remote; tifid nearly all of these were discovered by M. 

 Cuvier, in those plaster-quan-ies of Paris, which have thence become so celebra- 



* As regards his gis^nntic tapir, we now know that it is a very difl'orent animal from the 

 tapirs. This gn-at tapir of M. Cuvier is the Deinotlierium giganteitm, the head of which has 

 been made known to us by MM. de Klipsteiu and Kaup. M. Cuvier scarcely knew any 

 purt of it but the molar teeth. 

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