on the Disiribtdion of British Animals, 311 
their having been found at Blair-Drummond, I can only answer 
with safety, in the terms of a verdict peculiar to our criminal 
courts, Not Proven.*” 
The evidence then before us amounts to nothing more than 
this,— that there exist two horns of a rhinoceros, which at some 
unknown former time were found in some unknown place, by 
some unknown person, and preserved in some unknown room in 
the mansion of Blair-Drummond, from which they have since 
been removed to Edinburgh : Until, therefore, the bones or 
teeth of these animals shall be found in the moss of Blair-Drum- 
mond, or the loch of Forfar, or the skulls procured, which Dr 
Fleming hopes to find, we remain without the slightest evidence 
of the rhinoceros having been a postdiluvial inhabitant of Scot- 
land. 
Case IV . — Fossil HippopoiamL 
A hippopotamus is recorded by Lee, in his Natural History 
of Lancashire, as having been found under a peat-bog in that 
county. 
This evidence is unfortunately too imperfect to be of use in a 
disputed point. We simply learn from it that the bones were not 
in the peat but under it ; but whether the foundation on which 
this peat- bog lay was a bed of postdiluvian shell marl, or of 
diluvial clay or gravel, ’we are not informed* The analogy of the 
other localities in which the hippopotamus has been found in 
England, leads to the latter hypothesis. 
Dr Fleming concludes, These animals, formerly inhabitants 
of this country, have their remains preserved, not only in peat- 
bogs and marl-beds, but likewise in the silt of our great rivers ; 
in the valley of the Thames, for example, they occur in the re- 
gular stratified clay, sand, gravel, and peat.” As this conclu- 
sion is founded chiefly on the cases I have already discussed, it 
must stand or fall with them. He proceeds to support it fur- 
ther, by stating^ on the misinterpreted authority of Mr Trim- 
mer’s paper in the Philosophical Transactions, that the hippo- 
potamus and elephant occur in the valley of the Thames, in the 
regular stratified clay, sand, gravel, and peat. In reply to this, 
I venture to assert, that no remains of this kind have ever been 
found in the peat-bogs of any part of the valley of the Thataes, 
X 2 
