216 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Apr. 3, 



is remarkable for the confusion in which it is involved from the fact 

 of its being entirely distinct from the E. lejptorhinus of Baron Ciivier *. 

 The latter is founded upon a drawing of the head found near the 

 Monte Pulgnasco in the upper Yal d'Arno by M. Cortesiin 1805, and 

 preserved in the Museum at Milan. The original, Baron Cuvier never 

 saw ; but from the drawing made by M. Adolphe Brongniart he in- 

 ferred that it exhibited no trace of the osseous partition between 

 the nares, so characteristic in the tichorhine species ; and he there- 

 fore made it the type of the " Hhinoceros a narines non-cloison- 

 nees," or U. leptorhinus. This determination was considered vaHd 

 by the scientific men of Europe until, in 1835, M. de Christol, after 

 having obtained very careful drawings of the same skull by MM, 

 Gene and De la Marmora, came to the conclusion that the sketch 

 published by Cuvier was incorrect, and accounted for the ab- 

 sence of the cloison by the hypothesis that it had been broken 

 away. A comparison of his figure (Annales des Sciences, 2"^^ serie, 

 t. iv. pi. ii. fig. 4) with that in the ' Ossemens Fossiles ' (3rd edit, 

 t. ii. part i. pi. ix. fig. 7) proves the truth of these inferences, which, 

 moreover, were indorsed in the year 1846 by the authority of Prof. 

 Owen, On the other hand, Dr. Falconer incidentally mentions, 

 in his masterly treatise on the Mastodon and Elephant f, that the skull 

 in question is exactly as Baron Cuvier described it — without the 

 cloison. This conflicting evidence may perhaps be explained by 

 the presence of more than one skull of Ehinoceros in the same 

 Museum from the same deposit. As, however, M. de Christol's 

 criticisms upon Baron Cuvier's species have remained unchallenged 

 up to the present time, and, considering also that the remains of 

 the species without the cloison are very abundant in the upper Yal 

 d'Arno, the probability seems to me that M. de Christol is right in 

 disallowing the validity of Baron Cuvier's species, and that the skuU 

 which Dr. Falconer examined belongs to Rhinoceros megarhinus. 

 To which of the fossil species the skuU described by Cuvier may 

 really belong, to the tichorhine, megarhine, Etruscan, or leptorhine 

 of Professor Owen, is entirely a matter of conjecture. M. de 

 Christol has succeeded only in demonstrating that it is not what it 

 was supposed to be when it was constituted the type of the M. lep- 

 torliinus or '^ B. a narines non cloisonnees.^' For it Desmarest 

 proposed the name ofB. CuvieriX ; and Dr. Fischer § defined it speci- 

 fically as " capite bicorni, dentibus primoribus nullis, septo narium 

 nullo ; naribus multo gracilioribus, ossibusque nasalibus tenuioribus 

 quam in JR. Africano.'^ 



In this confusion the non-tichorhine species of Pliocene age were 

 left up to the year 1846. In that year Professor Owen, in his great 

 work the ' British Fossil Mammals ' proposed the name of B. lepto- 

 rhinus for portions of a skuU, a lower jaw, and bones of Bhinoceros 

 found in the freshwater deposits of Clacton, in Essex. A compari- 

 son of the lower jaw with those from the Yal d'Arno described by 



* Op. cit. p. 71. t Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 1865, p. 285. ~ 



+ Mam. pp. 402, 632. 



§ Synopsis MammaHum, 8vo, Stuttgardiee (1829), p. 416. 



