FOSSIL RHINOCEROSES. 



333 



HAIRY-EARED RHINOCEROS. (From the Proceedings of the Zoological Society.) 



and might almost be led about by a string." Begum was ultimately brought to London, and sold to 

 the Zoological Society for 1,250. 



THE FOSSIL RHINOCEROSES. 



Although the species of Rhinoceroses living at the present time are but few, the researches 

 of palaeontologists show us that in past time the number of species was considerable, and that they 

 were not, as now, confined to the warmer parts of the Old World, but were distributed over a large 

 portion of Northern Asia and Europe. 



The first representative of the Rhinoceros family is the Orthocynodon, an animal with large 

 upright canines, discovered in the Upper Eocene strata of the United States. The fossil Rhinoceroses 

 properly so called are first found in the Miocene, and are divided into four groups. The first group 

 is characterised by the nostrils being separated by a bony partition, and in the adult animal the 

 incisor teeth are lost : the second is distinguished by the absence of a bony partition between the 

 nostrils, and the incisor teeth are of a medium size : in the third there is no partition, but the incisors 

 are large ; and in the fourth it is imperfectly developed. 



An example of the first group, and probably the best known form of all the extinct Rhinoceroses, 

 is Rhinoceros tichorhinus, or the Woolly Rhinoceros. Like that of the Mammoth, with which animal it 

 was evidently associated, its entire body was covered with hair and wool, the skin had no folds, and its 

 nose carried two horns, the anterior of which was of remarkable size, and characteristic of the group to 

 which it belongs ; the nostrils were separated by a complete bony partition. The Woolly Rhinoceros has 

 been discovered under similar circumstances to that of the Mammoth, having been found embedded in ice 

 in the northern latitudes of Asia, in the years 1771 or 1772, being some twenty years previous to that 

 of the discovery of the first Mammoth by a fisherman named SchumachofF. According to Pallas, the 

 discovery was made by some Yakuts, who were on a hunting expedition, and took its dimensions on 

 the spot ; it was about eleven and a half feet in length. Its body was still clothed with skin, but alto- 

 gether the animal was so far decomposed that not more than the head and feet could be brought away. 

 On the skin many short hairs still remained. The range of the Woolly Rhinoceros was undoubtedly 

 the same as that of the Mammoth, except that it did not cross Behring Strait, and, consequently, its 

 remains are. not found in America. The remains of the Woolly Rhinoceros are found in numerous 



