WORK IN PALAONTOLOGY 137 
“ But it was especially in Germany, in the hands of 
Pallas, Camper, Blumenbach, anatomists and _ physi- 
cians, also those of Walch, Merck, Hollmann, Esper, 
Rosenmiiller, and Collini (who was not, however, 
occupied with natural history), of Beckman, who had 
even discussed the subject in a general .way (De 
reductione rerum fosstliuim ad genera naturalia pro- 
totyporuim — Nov. Comm. Soc. “Scicnt. Goettingensis, 
t. ii.), that paleontology applied to quadrupeds had 
already settled all that pertained to the largest 
species.” - 
sy. 
As early as 1764, Hollmann * had admirably identi- 
fied the bones of a rhinoceros found in a bone-deposit 
of the Hartz, although he had no skeleton of this 
animal for comparison. 
Pallas, in a series of memoirs dating from 1773, had 
discovered and distinguished the species of Siberian 
elephant or mammoth, the rhinoceros, and the large 
species of oxen and buffalo whose bones were found 
in such abundance in the quaternary deposits of Si- 
beria; and, as Blainville says, if he did not distinguish 
the species, it was because at this epoch the question 
of the distinction of the two species of rhinoceros and 
of elephants, in the absence of material, could not be 
solved. This solution, however, was made by the 
Dutch anatomist Camper, in 1777, who had brought 
together at Amsterdam a collection of skeletons and 
skulls of the existing species which enabled him for 
the first time to make the necessary comparisons be- 
tween the extinct and living species. A few years 
* Hollmann had still earlier published a paper entitled De corporumt 
marinorim, aliorumque peregrinorum in terra continente origine 
(Commentarii Soc. Goettingen., tom. iii., 1753, pp. 285-374). 
