314 RHINOCEROS. 



tion and different form of the intermaxillaries. To these 

 cranial characters he added more slender proportions in the 

 general construction of the skeleton, inferred from Val 

 d'Arno specimens which he attributed to the same species ; 

 and he held that the Italian fossil form approached more 

 nearly to the Rhinoceros bicomis of the Cape than to any 

 other known species. He appears to have considered that it 

 had been invested with two horns. Upon the characters of 

 the molar teeth he furnished little beyond what was merely 

 conjectural; for, having founded his conception of the 

 species mainly upon the characters furnished by Cortesi's* 

 skull, without examining the molars in that specimen, he 

 took it for granted that all the lower jaws, molars, and other 

 remains, occurring in Italy, which did not admit of identifi- 

 cation with Bhinoc. tichorhinus, must of necessity belong to 

 his Bhinoc. leptorhinus. The subject was not at the time 

 sufficiently advanced, nor the materials in sufficient abund- 

 ance, to lead him to conjecture that there might have been 

 two or more Italian fossil species different from the Siberian 

 form. But there are now the strongest grounds to believe 

 that such is the case ; and that Cuvier, as in the similar in- 

 stance of Eleph. primigenius, Eleph. antiquus, and Eleph. 

 meridionalis, confounded the remains of at least two Italian 

 fossil species of Bhinoceros under the common designation of 

 Bhinoceros leptorhinus. 



Bhinoceros leptorhinus, as thus defined by Cuvier, met with 

 ready acceptance among palaeontologists, and remained un- 

 disputed until the year 1834, when M. de Christol, 1 in a very 

 able and elaborate memoir ' On the Characters of the Large 

 Species of Fossil Rhinoceros,' broadly asserted that this sup- 

 posed species had no existence in nature, and that Cortesi's 

 cranium belonged to the Siberian form, Bh. tichorhinus. 

 Christol, like Cuvier, had not an opportunity of examining 

 the original, which in the interval had suffered considerable 

 injury by fracture of the facial portion ; but, having received 

 from Milan fresh drawings of the specimen thus altered in 

 appearance, he erroneously interpreted as a bony septum a 

 shaded representation of the internal surface of the nasal 

 cavity of the left side of the head, viewed from the right 

 side, where the corresponding part was mutilated. Dr. Cor- 

 nalia, of Milan, so late as 1853, submitted Cortesi's cranium 

 to a rigid examination, specially with a view to the deter- 

 mination of this point, and states in the most positive terms 

 that there is not a trace even of the supposed bony septum : 

 ■ Cette cloison n'existe nullement. La voute de la cavite 

 nasale ne presente, le long de sa ligne mediane, aucun prin- 



1 Aimales des Scicnc. Nat. 1835, 2nie Ser. torn. iv. p. 44. 



