328 RHINOCEROS. 



creature ;" and then proceeds to discuss at length the ques- 

 tion, " How it possibly came there ? Piscis in arido ?" with 

 its four following branches : 



" 1. Whether the situation and condition, face and figure 

 of the place, may possibly admit of the sea's once insi- 

 nuating itself thither ? 



" 2. Whether (that possibility being granted or evinced) 

 the sea did ever actually insinuate itself so far as to this 

 place, and when ? 



" 3. How, in probability, and when, this valley or level 

 being once sea-land, should come to be so quite deserted 

 and forsaken of the sea, as it is at this day, the sea not 

 approaching by so many, a dozen, miles or more ? 



" 4. By what means the sea, once having its play there, 

 this creature comes to lodge and be found so deep in the 

 ground, and under such a shelving bank I" 



Our limits compel us to terminate here the quotations, 

 and to refer the geologist, interested in such early at- 

 tempts to solve the problems relating to the changes in 

 the earth's surface, to the pamphlet itself, of which a 

 copy exists in the King's Library in the British Museum, 

 or to the reprint of it in the Philosophical Transactions 

 for 1701, No. 272, p. 882. 



With the inquiry into the causes of the sea's progress 

 and retreat in Kent, as evidenced by the supposed " sea- 

 bred monster," we have here, in fact, the less concern, 

 since we shall be able to shew that it belonged to a 

 terrestrial genus of quadruped. 



The figures of two of its teeth, " part of what the 

 author intended, if he had lived," are so exact, and the 

 progress of Comparative Anatomy since 1668 has been 

 so immense, that they may now be determined, without 

 much laudable ingenuity or blameable rashness, to have 



