WORK IN PALEONTOLOGY 



137 



" But it was especially in Germany, in the hands of 

 Pallas, Camper, Blumenbach, anatomists and physi- 

 cians, also those of Walch, Merck, HoUmann, Esper, 

 Rosenmiiller, and Collini (who was not, however, 

 occupied with natural history), of Beckman, who had 

 even discussed the subject in a general way {De 

 reductione rerum fossilium ad genera naturalia pro- 

 totyporum — Nov. Comin. Soc. Scient. Goettingensis, 

 t. ii.), that palaeontology applied to quadrupeds had 

 already settled all that pertained to the largest 

 species." 



As early as 1764, Hollmann* had admirably identi- 

 fied the bones of a rhinoceros found in a bone-deposit 

 of the Hartz, although he had no skeleton of this 

 animal for comparison. 



Pallas, in a series of memoirs dating from 1773, had 

 discovered and distinguished the species of Siberian 

 elephant or mammoth, the rhinoceros, and the large 

 species of oxen and buffalo whose bones were found 

 in such abundance in the quaternary deposits of Si- 

 beria ; and, as Blainville says, if he did not distinguish 

 the species, it was because at this epoch the question 

 of the distinction of the two species of rhinoceros and 

 of elephants, in the absence of material, could not be 

 solved. This solution, however, was made by the 

 Dutch anatomist Camper, in 1777, who had brought 

 together at Amsterdam a collection of skeletons and 

 skulls of the existing species which enabled him for 

 the first time to make the necessary comparisons be- 

 tween the extinct and living species. A few years 



* HoUmann had still earlier published a paper entitled De corporum 

 marinortim, aliorumque peregrinorum in terra continente origine 

 (Commentarii Soc. Goetiingen., torn, iii., 1753, pp. 285-374). 



