an the Distribution (^British Animals. S09 
ihat are post-diluvial ; it occurs with elephants and hippopotami 
!H the diluvium, at Walton in Essex, and in the diluvial gravel 
of Germany, France, &c. * The evidence to prove its more re- 
cent existence, should, therefore, be carefully attended to, and 
forms an interesting subject of inquiry^ 
Case lll.-^Morns of Rhinoceros in Scotland. 
Dr Fleming states, p. 29T, that a specimen of the born of 
the fossil rhinoceros, found in one of the marl-pits at the Locb 
of Forfair -f, exists at present in the Edinburgh Museum, and 
we have' been informed by Professor Jameson, that two other 
examples have occurred in Blair-Drummond moss on the banks 
of the Forth. It is to be hoped, he adds, that the skulls will yet 
be procured.” 
Could the above cases be established, they would be decisive 
in favour of the theory maintained by Dr Fleming. In my 
Reliquim Diluvianae, p. 33, I have expressed an opposite opi- 
nion, that the horns of the rhinoceros neither have nor are like- 
ly to be ever found in a fossil state, unless when preserved in 
ice. I made it my business, therefore, whilst at Edinburgh, 
carefully to investigate the cases here alleged to have existed in 
that neighbourhood, and the following are the results. 
Mr David Don informs me that the horn in the Edinburgh 
Museum was presented by himself and his brother, on the death 
of their father in the year 1814, to a museum then existing at 
Dundee, which was shortly after broken up and the contents 
sold by auction ; and that the story of its having been found in 
the Loch at Forfar, must have been invented either by the auc- 
tioneer or the person who bought it of him, and sold it again to 
the Museum at Edinburgh, at a price proportionate to the in- 
creased value that would justly have been attached to it, if it 
had really been a Scotch fossil Mr Don, however, affixed no 
• A detailed description of the remarkable Skeleton of the Fossil Elk,discover« 
dd in the Isle of Man, and now preserved in the Museum at Edinburgh, will be 
given, by Professor Jameson, in a future Number of this Journal. 
"t VideWern. Mem. voL iv. p. 582. 
$ In the recent sale at Fonthill, the public were, in a similar manner, informed, 
that a vase of rock crystal, submitted to the hammer, was a real topaz ; and the 
authority of Professor Buckland, who had never seen or heard of the gem in ques- 
tion, was advanced in confirmation of the alleged fact. 
VOL, XII. NO, 24. APRIL 1825. 
X 
