ME. W. E. DAWKINS ON EHINOCEEOS MEGAEHINUS. 401 



what Cuvier supposed it to be, when from his imperfect drawings he 

 made it the type of R. leptorhinus* Desmarestf proposed the name of 

 2d. Cuvieri for the same skull, and FischerJ defined it specifically as 

 ** capite bicorni, dentibus primoribus nullis, septo narium nullo ; 

 naribus multo gracilioribus, ossibus-que nasalibus tenuioribus quam 

 in B. Africano.'^ In this confusion the remains of the non-tichorhine 

 Pleistocene rhinoceros were left until the year 1846, when Professor 

 Owen, after a comparison of the lower jaw, found with skull, teeth 

 and bones at Clacton in Essex, and now in our National Collection, 

 with the lower jaws irom the Val d'Amo ascribed by Cuvier to 

 M. leptorhinus, came to the conclusion that they belonged to one and 

 the same species. In the British Fossil Mammals, figs. 131 and 138, 

 he gives portions of the skull that exhibit not the total absence of the 

 septum that Cuvier considered characteristic, but its partial develop- 

 ment only. Whether the lower jaws from Italy, by which Professor 

 Owen connects his species with that of the great anatomist, belong 

 to the leptorhine as defined by the latter or not, may be an open 

 question. But it is beyond all doubt that the assemblage of remains 

 of Ehinoceros from Clacton belongs to some one species of rhino- 

 ceros that is not tichorhine. For that assemblage the name 

 leptorhinus^ which has stood in the catalogues for eighteen years, 

 has a claim to be maintained : for, though Cuvier's definition of 

 the species as a narines non cloisonnees be inapplicable, and the 

 more accurate term would be d narines demi-cloisonnees (Id. hemi- 

 tceehus of Dr. Falconer), yet, as Professor Owen justly remarks, 

 " since the nasal bones, notwithstanding their partial osseous sup- 

 porting wall are actually more slender than those of R. tichorliimis 

 there can be no valid objection to the Latin * nomen triviale' lepto- 

 rhinus, and every reason for retaining it." R. leptorhinus then, as 

 defined by Professor Owen in 1846, the equivalent of R. hemitoechus 

 of Dr. Falconer, is the second Pleistocene species found in Britain. It 

 occurs in the brick-earths and gravel-pits of ' the lower terrace* of 

 the Thames "Valley at Clacton, Ilford, Crayford, and Peckham. It is 

 the species that fell a prey to the hyenas of Kirkdale and Wookey 

 Hole, and its teeth have been found in the ossiferous caverns of 



• An upper molar tooth of Rhinoceros from the Val d'Amo belongs neither to 

 the tichorhine, leptorhine, nor megarhine species, and possibly may belong to the 

 same species as the skull in question from the same deposit. 



t Mamm. 402, 632. 



J Synopsis Manmialiura, p. 416. 8vo. Stutgardtia, 1829. 

 N. H. R.-1865. 2 E 



