332 RHINOCEROS. 



The bony partition- wall, with its peculiar anterior termi- 

 nation,* is well displayed in some of the entire skulls of the 

 tiehorhine Rhinoceros, which have been discovered in this 

 country. One of these, figured by Cuvier, ' Ossemens 

 Fossiles, 1 4to., 1822, torn, ii., pt. 1., pi. ix., fig. 3, was 

 found in a slate-pit at Stonesfield in Oxfordshire, about 

 four miles from Woodstock. Dr. Buckland possesses fine 

 specimens of the skulls and other bones of the same 

 extinct Rhinoceros, which were discovered, associated with 

 remains of the Mammoth, Hyaena, &c., in the drift on 

 the banks of the Avon, at Lawford, near Rugby. 



The most complete skeletons have been found, as might 

 be expected, in caverns or cavernous fissures, where the 

 carcass of the fallen animal has been best protected from 

 external changes and movements of the soil. 



Dr. Buckland has recorded one of the most remarkable 

 examples of this kind, which was brought to light in 

 the operation of sinking a shaft through solid mountain 

 limestone (fig. 130, F), in a mining operation for lead- 

 ore near Wirksworth, Derbyshire.^ A natural cavern 

 (ib. c) was thus laid open, which had become filled to 

 the roof with a confused mass of argillaceous earth and 

 fragments of stone, and had communicated with the sur- 

 face by a fissure (ib. B) fifty-eight feet deep and six feet 

 broad, similarly filled to the top, where the outlet (ib. A) 

 had been concealed by the vegetation. Near the bottom 

 of this fissure, but in the midst of the drift (ib. D), and 

 raised by many feet of the same material from the floor 

 of the cavern, was found nearly the whole skeleton of 

 a Rhinoceros (ib. E), with the bones almost in their natural 



* The name imposed by Cuvier on the present extinct species of Rhinoceros 

 has reference to this structure : it is from ri7%at, a wall, //*, a nose : ticfior/tinus. 

 f- 'Reliquiae Diluvianaj, 1 p. 61. 



