ON THE BONES OF THE HIPPOPOTAMUS, 375 



with sufficient attention, and to describe them vA-ith that minuteness of 

 detail which the nature of the subject demanded. Daubenton went 

 so far as to find, in those of the mastodons of Ohio and Simorre, an 

 analogy with those of the hippopotamus, which most certainly does 

 not exist. He even gave the title of teeUi of the hippopotamus to the 

 smaller specimens of Ohio. (Description of the King's Museum in the 

 Nat Hist., vol. xii, in 4to. pp. 74- — 78). 



Pallas having obtained from Siberia some teeth similar to those of 

 Ohio, and wishing to ascertain their real points of resemblance with 

 those of the hippopotamus, procured from Camper a good drawing of 

 a jaw tooth, which he had engraved in the Memoirs of the Academy 

 of Petersburgh for 1777, part ii, pi. viii, fig. 3; with a view of show- 

 ing how widely it differed from those of the great fossil animals. 



Again Buffon, in the justificatory notes of his Epochs of Nature, 

 printed in 1777 (Suppl. vol. v. plate vi.), published another engraving 

 of the molar tooth of an hippopotamus, with the same views enter- 

 tained by Pallas, namely to prove how much those teeth differed from 

 those of Ohio, when the latter are not worn. True it is that in the 

 same passage he takes some other teeth of Ohio, which had changed 

 their shape in the process of mastication, for teeth of the hippopo- 

 tamus ; but this is a peculiar mistake to which I shall hereafter have 

 occasion to advert. 



Here is a full statement of all the information I was able to collect 

 on the osteology of this great quadruped, at the period of the publi- 

 cation of the first edition of my researches. In fact these documents 

 afforded ample facilities to enable me to recognize many fossil speci- 

 mens, such as all the species of teeth, the fragments of the head, &c. . 

 and as there are specimens of these descriptions in the collections, as 

 well as of the other parts of the body, the osteology of which was then 

 unknown, there was no ground for raising a doubt about the existence 

 .of the fossil bones of the hippopotamus, as has been done by M. Faujas 

 de Saint Fond in his Essay on Geology, 



Although I felt perfectly convinced of the species of the fossils in 

 question, nevertheless I considered I should be much better qualified 

 to place the truth in its proper light if the entire skeleton of the ani- 

 mal were known ; and after various efforts to procure one of an adult 

 subject, being assured that the issue of my researches upon fossilquad- 

 rupeds would necessarily require an examination of this subject, I had 

 recourse to an expedient adopted by Daubenton on a similar occasion. 

 He had extracted a single bone from the body of a foetus : I had the 

 remainder of the skeleton prepared, but as, those parts which had not 

 become ossified would have become rigid by exposure to the atmos- 

 phere, and would consequently have lost their real shape, I had the 

 the whole preserved in liquor. In this way I obtained with almost 

 perfect, exactness, the shapes of all the bones, with the exception of the 

 head, and from them I composed the figure of the skeleton which I 

 then laid before the public. 



The head was too large in proportion, and as the teeth had not all' 

 emerged from their sockets, nor had the sinuses become developed, 

 its shape was very different from that of the adult. This defect I 

 supplied by replacing it by a head drawn from the adult living animal. 



II 2 



