404 ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADRUPEDS. 



naturalist, previous to his having seen mv work, had himself arrived at 

 a precisely similar conclusion, namely, that the fossil species differs 

 from the hippopotamus of our days. 



M. Nesti proves this proposition, by a comparative table of the 

 dimensions of the heads of the fossil and living animal, which I think 

 I am bound to lay before my readers. 



The head and lower jaw represented by him are the same from which 

 the figures of my plate 35 are taken ; but he has added a pelvis, a 

 shoulder-blade, a humerus, more perfect than those which I have had 

 an opportunity of drawing ; and in addition to these, an atlas, an axis, 

 and some small bones which I never was so fortunate as to obtain. 



Hence his shoulder-blade is complete, with the exception of a slight 

 deficiency of the coronoid tuberosity. It presents no sensible differ- 

 ence from my shoulder-blade of the living animal, except it may be a 

 somewhat greater width tow T ards the middle of the spine. Its humeral 

 articulation is quite as round as it is in the living animal, while mine 

 is more oblong. Can this have proceeded from some mutilation 

 effected in either of them ? It is quite clear, from an inspection of his 

 humerus, that that bone is much thicker in the fossil than in the living 

 animal — a fact already pointed out by my two fragments. The excess 

 in the height and thickness of the fore-arm is also easily distinguish- 

 able in them. 



As for the vertebrae, I could not venture to form a comparison 

 between them, upon the strength of figures alone, as those of the fossil 

 animal may have been mutilated and deformed. 



It is but a short time since some teeth of the hippopotamus were 

 found in the cavern at Kirkdale, in Yorkshire. 



Head of an Hippopotamus found in England. 



Mr. Buckland, in his Reliquiae Diluvianse, (plate 22, fig. 5), copies 

 a figure of the head of an hippopotamus, published by Lee in his 

 History of Lancashire, printed at Oxford in 1700, which, according 

 to the latter author, was found in that county, beneath some moss — 

 probably meaning peat. 



Bones of the Hippopotamus found in Tuscany. 



I cannot refrain from recording in this place the debt of gratitude 

 •which the Museum owes to his Imperial Highness the late Grand Duke 

 of Tuscany, for the presents of fossil bones which that prince, in his 

 anxiety for the promotion of scientific knowledge, sent us a short time 

 before his death. He has thereby furnished us with an almost com- 

 plete series of the bones of the fossil hippopotamus. Amongst them 

 is a head, a lower jaw, and a pelvis, which are scarcely deficient in a 

 single particular. These splendid specimens are decisively confirma- 

 tory of the striking resemblances which both M. Nesti and myself had 

 pointed out as causing the fossil to approximate so closely to the living 

 hippopotamus, at the same time that we noticed the slight differ- 

 ences which distinguish them. It is solely from a disinclination to 

 swell the number of plates, which already encumber this work, that I 

 abstain from representing these precious objects. 



