20 



GUIDE TO THE FOSSIL MAMMALS AND BIRDS. 



Pier-oases 

 6-8. 



[Table-case 

 4. 



described by William Somner in 1669 in a small printed 

 tract entitled, " Chartham News ; or, A Brief Eelation of some 

 strange Bones there lately digged up, in some grounds of 

 Mr. John Somner of Canterbury;" but they were wrongly 

 supposed to belong to some " sea-monster." One fine skull 

 and associated bones were found in an excavation beneath 

 the " Daily Chronicle " office in Fleet Street, London. Other 

 fragmentary remains from English caverns prove that this 

 rhinoceros was commonly preyed upon by the hyaenas. One 

 oval plate of bone from Kent's Cavern is particularly note- 

 worthy, and exhibits deep tooth-marks round its edge. It 



FigJIO — Skullland lower jaw of the Slender-nosed Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros 

 leptorhinus), from the Pleistocene of Ilford, Essex ; one-eighth nat. 

 size. (Bradyi Collection, Pier-case 6.) 



Pier-case 6. 



Table-case, 



4. 



is evidently the bone to which the front horn was fixed at 

 the time when the hysenas gnawed it, and the limit of their 

 gnawing was determined by the size of the base of this 

 horn which has since decayed. 



Two other species (B. leptorhinus and B. megarhinus) 

 are represented in the Pleistocene deposits of England and 

 the adjoining parts of the continent, in association with the 

 woolly rhinoceros. Fine skulls of B. leptorhinus (Fig. 10) 

 from the Thames Valley are placed in Pier-case 6 ; and there 

 are teeth and jaws of this species and B. megarhinus both in 

 Pier-case 6 and in Table-case 4. A slightly earlier rhinoceros 

 (B. etruscus), which commonly occurs in the Upper Pliocene 



