ON THE BONES OF THE RHINOCEROS. 415 



alveoli : he sent an account of these facts to Pallas, early enough to 

 have them printed with his principal memoir. 



He stated the same facts in his Dutch dissertation on the two- 

 horned rhinoceros, published in 1782, the figures of which were the 

 same as those addressed to the Academy of Petersburg. 



He confirmed them in 1785, when he again made a drawing of a 

 head of a one-horned rhinoceros at the British Museum ; and having 

 himself procured an older one than he had at first, he had it engraved, 

 in 1787, by Vinkeles, with his former figure of the two-horned one,- 

 in a splendid plate in folio, dedicated to James Vandersteege — a plate 

 which he did not publish, but of which he only gave some copies to 

 his friends. I am indebted for one to the friendship of his late son. 



This figure of the head of the one-horned rhinoceros is imperfect, in 

 as much as several ligaments still cover the true forms of the bones ; 

 there is one in particular behind the orbit, which might deceive per- 

 sons not well experienced in the matter, and which might pass for a 

 bony septum which separated this fossa from that of the temporal 

 bones. 



Still M. Blumenbach had this plate copied in a small size in his 

 collection of figures of natural history, first part, No. 7. 



In fine, M. Faujas had a drawing made, in small size, by Marechal, 

 of the bony head of the adult skeleton of the one-horned rhinoceros 

 in the Museum, and had it engraved in the tenth plate of his Essay on 

 Geology ; but this figure is no more accompanied with descriptions 

 than that of Camper ; besides, though tolerably correct on the whole, 

 it is rendered confused with rugosities of too marked an appearance, by 

 the engraver, and there are no sutures to be seen in it. 



If to what I have just said we add the excellent figures of the lower 

 surface of the cranium, and of the lower jaw of the two-horned rhino- 

 ceros, given by Merk, which are also without any description, in his 

 third letter on fossil bones, printed at Darmstadt, in 1786, we shall 

 have, I think, the complete resume of the materials published pre- 

 viously to my first edition, on the osteology of this remarkable genus 

 of quadrupeds ; and it is seen that I did not fail to resume this sub- 

 ject, and to treat it with an extent proportioned to its importance. 



I shall then be obliged, as in the case of the elephant, to give first, 

 by way of comparison, the osteological description of the living species 

 best known. I shall then pass on to the distinction which exists be- 

 tween the living species, and to the characters by which they may be 

 known ; and it is only then I shall be able to compare the fossil bones 

 to them, and to determine whether they belong to one or several of 

 them, or to unknown species. 



The proportions which are to serve as the basis of my descriptions, 

 are — 



1st. The fine skeleton, prepared by the late Mertrud, of the one- 

 horned rhinoceros of India, which lived for twenty-one years in the 

 menagerie of Versailles, the same that was seen alive by Peter Camper, 

 and of which Buffon has spoken in his supplements*. 



Tome iii, page 297. 



