﻿xxxii INTRODUCTION. 



specimen from Montpellier the septum between the nares is absent. It is closely allied to 

 the R. leptorhinus of Professor Owen, but differs materially in its larger size, and in a 

 great many other points. Its existence in Britain was first satisfactorily determined by 

 Mr. Boyd Dawkins, 1 in the spring of 1865. The remains belonging to this species have 

 been obtained from three localities in the valley of the Thames, at Grays Thurrock, Cray- 

 ford, and Ilford, and are preserved for the most part in the British Museum. In the 

 cabinets also of Dr. Spurrell and Mr. Grantham are some upper molars from the south 

 bank of the Thames near Crayford, in Kent ; while in the beautiful collection of mammalia 

 from Ilford, in Essex, on the north bank, made by Dr. Cotton, F.G.S., are two molar teeth. 

 A single worn and mutilated tooth, obtained by Mr. Prestwich from the railway-cutting 

 near Bedford, may possible belong to this species ; but its condition renders a precise 

 determination impossible. The Rev. J. Gunn, F.G.S., has a fine upper premolar of 

 this species in his collection from the forest-bed of Norfolk, where, as in Italy, it is 

 associated with Elephas antiquus, E. meridionalis, and E. prisons. 



The occurrence of these Pliocene species, the remains of which in the marine sands of 

 Montpellier were found in association with Mastodon brevirostris, and Halitherium Serresii, 

 in the lower part of the Thames Valley, is a very curious and interesting fact, especially as 

 at Grays Thurrock it is associated with the Elephas priscus, Falc, of the Pliocenes of the 

 Val d'Arno. It may perhaps attach a higher antiquity to the Pleistocene river-deposits in 

 which it is found than those from which it is absent. 



Species Rhinoceros etruscus, Pale. — In the collections of the Rev. J. Gunn, F.G.S.. 

 and of the Rev. S. W. King, P.G.S., Dr. Falconer, identified also the remains of a second 

 species of Pliocene rhinoceros derived from the Preglacial deposits on the Norfolk shore. 

 It is a species found very abundantly in the deposits of the Val d'Arno, near Florence. 

 The upper true molars from the latter place differ from those of the tichorhine rhinoceros in 

 all points of difference presented by the megarhine and leptorhine species. In size and 

 general form they are more closely allied to the latter of these two species. From both 

 they differ in their small size, coupled with the lowness of the crowns of the upper molars 

 and basal excavation of the external lamina. A second upper true molar in the cabinet 

 of the Rev. J. Gunn, F.G.S., presents also a cusp at the valley-entrance. 



§ 9, h. Proboscidea. — Genus Elephas. — The proper classification of the genus 

 Elephas we owe to the cosmopolitan researches of the late Dr. Falconer, brought before 

 the Geological Society of London in 1857, and published in the ' Quarterly Journal' for 

 1865. 2 Beginning with the mastodons he traces, in a most masterly way, the gradual 

 passage through the various existing and extinct species into the Elephas Indicus and the 



1 ' Nat. Hist. Rev.' (1865), No. xix, p. 99. 



2 This short abstract of Dr. Falconer's papers, we give, merely that our readers may be in possession 

 of the facts. 



