328 



NATURE 



[SEPTEMUIiR I, 192, 



certain of the foot bones, and notably in the neck. 

 The neck bones, in fact, of all the many animals with 

 which Baluchitherium has been compaired, come 



Fig. 4. — Toe bone of Baluchitherium, 15 inches long, with the corresponding 

 bone of a modem rhinoceros for comparison. Larger bones than the 

 one figured have been found. 



nearest in proportions and shape, though of course 

 not in size, to those of the horse. They show, however, 

 one feature, which is unique in mammals and can only 

 be paralleled in certain of the gigantic extinct reptiles, 

 in that the lateral canals through which a blood-vessel 

 runs are hollowed out into large cavities. These are 

 so large that the central portion of the 

 vertebra is reduced to a thin vertical parti- 

 tion, and in section 2 the bony parts of the 

 centrum have a I shape ; in fact Baluchi- 

 therium, in order to combine lightness with 

 the necessary strength, has hit upon a 

 design well known to engineers in the con- 

 struction of girders. 



Owing to the size of the limb bones and 

 the height of the feet, Baluchitherium must 

 have stood from twelve to thirteen feet 

 from the ground, and with its horse-like 

 neck and five-foot skull, an enormous skull 

 length for a land mammal, must have had 

 an over-all length of at least twenty-three 

 feet ! One curious point in all this bulk 

 is that the head seems almost too small 

 for the body ! 



The gigantic size of this animal can best be seen 

 from the figures of Prof. Osborn ^ of his restoration of 



• A cast of one of these vertebrae in section, together with the original 

 bones of Baluchitherium, can be seen in the palaontological gallery of the 

 British Museum (Natural History). 



' Loc, cit. 



Baluchitherium (Fig. 5) compared with a wintr 

 rhinoceros drawn to the same scale. It will be noin i <! 

 that Baluchitherium, as restored, is considerately 

 higher in the fore than in the hind quarters. This is 

 a perfectly reasonable restoration on the assumption 

 that the animal very probably fed upon the leaves i>i 

 trees, but until the limb bones of a single aiiiJi tl 

 are obtained it cannot l^e proved. An altemati\< 

 restoration, also by Prof. Oslwm, more on the lint 

 of an ordinary rhinoceros, gives a somewhat different 

 appearance. 



The relationships of this anim ' i^ 



obscure. 



It is certainly a rhinoceros, but unlikt any knuun 

 form, modem or ancient. In the teeth and skull, 

 except for strong downwardly turned upper tusks, it 

 is like the extinct hornless Aceratherine rhinoceroses, 

 but the " horsehke " features of the feet and neck 

 preclude any close connexion. There is no suggestion 

 of any but superficial resemblance to the horses, 



from which the tooth structure alone would at ' 



exclude it. In fact it will be necessary' to go 

 a long way in time to find the starting-point of liaiu 

 chitherium, and this point is at present unknowTi, 

 although the present writer has suggested the littl' 

 Eocene Triplopus, a rhinoceros-hke animal with certain 

 horse-like features in its limbs, as a possible signpost. 



In his reconstruction Prof. Osborn has restored 

 the fragment of lower jaw on the lines of the lower 

 jaws of Paraceratherium (Fig. 2). The relations of 

 these two forms are not yet clear. Baluchitherium is 

 nearly twice the size of Paraceratherium, which is 

 rather too large to be accounted for as a sexual differ- 

 ence. Moreover, there are a number of differences in 



Fig. 5. 



-Restoration of Baluchitherium, with outline of the white i Jnoceros for 

 comparison. (After Osborn.) 



the skull and teeth which render it probable that the 

 forms are really different. It is much to be hoped 

 that the American expedition will be successful in 

 finding the front part of the lower jaw of Baluchi- 

 therium, which will go far to decide the point. 



Nutrition Problems during Famine Conditions in Russia. 



By Prof. Boris Slovtzov, Professor of Biochemistry at the Medical Institute for Women at Petrograd, 



T AM glad that it has fallen to^my lot to be one of the 

 J- first physiologists to get through the cordon which 

 has almost come to be considered as a kind of a second 

 Chinese Wall. Russian scientific men have been cut 

 off from Europe for about eight years, and have there- 



NO. 2809, VOL. 112] 



fore been obliged to follow their scientific work in 

 their own way. 



Now that we are gradually becoming aware, through 

 the literature and by means of personal obser\ation . 

 of the intensive work that has been done in the West 



