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CHAPTER IV. 



OF THE BONES OF THE KHIN-QCEROS. 



The genus of the rhinoceros, extraordinary as that animal may appear 

 to those who see it for the first time, is a little less isolated in living 

 nature than that of elephants. It is obviously connected, with respect 

 to its osteology, with the damans, tapirs, and horses; and among 

 fossils there are several other genera, which resemble it in some of 

 their parts. 



The fossil bones of the rhinoceros, somewhat less numerous than 

 those of elephants, are found, however, to be very abundant. Both 

 have been discovered in the same countries and in the same places ; 

 but the teeth of the rhinoceros, being smaller in size, have not been so 

 often remarked. These animals have not, like elephants, those enormous 

 ivory tusks, which must always insure them particular attention ; and it 

 is probably from these circumstances that fragments of this genus have 

 been less carefully collected, and that mention has been made of them 

 less frequently in the works of naturalists. 



Besides, before my time, people had not such abundant resources for 

 the study of those bodies as for that of the bones of elephants. How- 

 ever defective the figures and descriptions of the latter might be, they 

 were however in existence ; whilst with respect to the rhinoceros, no- 

 thing was known but the osteology of his head ; even that was known, 

 but a very short time ; and even what was known, was far from being 

 reduced to clear terms. 



In fact, when Pallas, in the thirteenth volume of the Novi Conimen- 

 tarii of Petersburg, in 1769, published an account of the fossil remains 

 of rhinoceroses found in different parts of Siberia, he expressed his regret 

 at not finding in any of the works of naturalists a description of the 

 osteology of the living rhinoceros, and particularly of his cranium. 



Camper soon had an opportunity of procuring for him what he wanted; 

 he addressed to the Academy of Petersburg a description, and some 

 figures of the head of the two-horned rhinoceros of the Cape of Good 

 Hope. His paper was inserted in the first volume of the Acts for the 

 year 1777, part ii, which was not printed till 1780. 



This great anatomist had not then any knowledge of the differences 

 of teeth which characterise the two rhinoceroses ; and as he had not 

 found any incisors in his two-horned species, he accused Parsons, Lin- 

 nseus, and Buffon of error, of having attributed them to the one- 

 horned species. 



But at the very time that preparation was making to print his Me- 

 moir, he came to Paris, and observed the one-horned rhinoceros, which 

 then lived in the menagerie of Versailles ; he recognised its incisor teeth; 

 he procured also the head of a young one, and made a drawing of its 



