EIIINOCEKOS IIEMIT(ECHUS. 317 



leptorhinus dates from the publication of the ' British Fossil 

 Mammalia' in 1846, when Professor Owen brought out his 

 elaborate and detailed description of the remarkable cranium 

 and other remains discovered at Clacton, in Essex, by our 

 veteran Associate, Mr. John Brown, of Stanway. The skull 

 in question is chiefly notable from its presenting the well- 

 marked appearance of an incomplete bony partition connect- 

 ing the anterior half of the nasal bones vertically with the 

 osseous floor of the nasal cavity. (See Plate XV.) When 

 the specimen first came under the inspection of Mr. Owen, 

 he was induced to refer it, on account of this septum, to the 

 ' Rhinoceros a. narines cloisonees,' or Rhinoc. tichorhinus of 

 Cuvier, and it is quoted as such in his Eeport to the British 

 Association in 184-3. But when submitted to a more rigorous 

 examination, at a subsequent period, the practised eye of this 

 eminent palaeontologist detected in it important points of 

 difference irreconcilable with Rhinoceros tichorhinus; and 

 having faith in the accuracy of the confidently- expressed, 

 but erroneous conclusions of Christol, respecting the presence 

 of a septum in Cortesi's cranium, he was naturally led to 

 identify the Clacton skull with the Rhinoceros leptorhinus of 

 Cuvier. This conviction was strengthened by the examina- 

 tion of a ramus of the lower jaw, also found by Mr. Brown 

 in the same deposit at Clacton, which Professor Owen con- 

 cluded was identical with lower jaws from Tuscany, referred 

 by Cuvier to his Rhinoceros leptorhinus (Oss. Foss., torn. ii. 

 PI. IX. figs. 8 and 9); and with the lower jaw from the 

 Ehine, referred by Kaup to Rhinoceros Merchii. The Clacton, 

 Tuscan, and Rhenish specimens were included under the 

 common designation of Rhinoceros leptorhinus. 



The great weight of Professor Owen's authority was 

 evinced in the accounts given by other palaeontologists of 

 Rhinoceros leptorhinus after 1846. De Blainville, in his ' Os- 

 teographie,' although at variance upon some points of detail, 

 admitted the Clacton skull into his limitation of Rhinoceros 

 leptorhinus, with which he combined the Rhinoceros of Mont- 

 pellier, of Marcel de Serres, and the Rhinoc. megarhinus of 

 Christol. But he eliminated the Rhenish materials, referred 

 by Jager and Kaup to Rhin. MercJcii, and referred them to 

 Rhinoceros incisivus, being in his view the male of the Miocene 

 Aceratherium incisivum of Eppelsheim ! This portion of De 

 Blainville's palseontological labours has met with severe 

 strictures from some of his own countrymen, and with stern 

 condemnation by Kaup. 



Lam-illard, in 1849, in his revision of the Fossil Species 

 of Rhinoceros, presents Rhinoceros leptorhinus in a manner 

 which attempts to combine the irreconcilable conceptions of 



