PROF. OWEN ON THE ANATOMY OF THE INDIAN RHINOCEROS. 33 



of paralysis, further damage to the skeleton for the purpose of examining the spinal 

 marrow at that part was not deemed expedient. 



Our able and active Secretary has reminded me, that at the time when the large male 

 Elephant was exhibited along with the Rhinoceros in a contiguous paddock, the latter 

 used to submit to be poked on the back by the Elephant, who could lift his head over 

 the paUngs and press down with his tusks upon the thick hide of the Rhinoceros ; and 

 that the Rhinoceros has been observed to have been thus forced down until his belly 

 touched the ground. Now although this procedure did not actually fracture the spines 

 or neural arches so pressed upon, it most probably strained the ligaments beneath the 

 bodies of the same vertebrae, and produced the ossific inflammation which led to the 

 anchylosis and tumour discovered on dissection. One cannot, however, attribute to 

 this old injury the immediate cause of the animal's rapidly fatal malady. It may have 

 led to the fracture of the rib articulating to the anchylosed parts, through the sup- 

 pression of that degree of elastic yielding, which the interspace of the vertebrae in their 

 ordinarily moveable state would have afforded. The animal, in lying down, usually 

 fell heavily on its side, and the rib had probably become fractured on one of these 

 occasions by ' contre-coup.' 



The external form and characters of the present specimen of Indian Rhinoceros 

 agreed with the full and often-repeated descriptions which have been already published ; 

 especially with that excellent one by Daubenton in Buffon's ' Histoire Naturelle,' 4to, 

 torn. xi. p. 198, and with the description, illustrated by two fine and accurate figures, 

 by F. Cuvier in the 'Histoire Naturelle des Mammif^res,' fol., fasc. xiii. 1820, p. 2. 

 The only point which appears to have escaped these and other good observers, is the 

 orifice behind each carpus and tarsus, which forms the termination of the duct of a 

 pretty large subdermal glandular pouch. 



In the male Rhinoceros unicornis, in a state of nature, the horn, when the animal has 

 attained the length of nine feet eight inches, is, according to Mr. Hodgson, the learned 

 and accomplished Resident at Nepal, five inches in height. In the Society's specimen, 

 the horn, owing to the habit which the animal had acquired of rubbing and beating it 

 against the woodwork of its den, had never been permitted to grow beyond eight inches 

 in height ; but its base measured nine inches in transverse breadth, eleven inches in 

 antero-posterior extent, and twenty-six inches in circumference. It was distant 



Inches. 



From the inner canthus of the eye 4 



From the end of the upper lip 7 



From the occipital ridge 22 



In a female Rhinoceros of the same species which died in a travelling menagerie in 

 January 1838', and was purchased by the Royal College of Surgeons, the horn was a mere 



' This animal was found dead in its den after a night during which the thermometer had fallen 10° below 



g2 



