180 Sir Everard Home’s account of some 
Mr. Brooks, Surgeon, and Teacher of Anatomy in Blen- 
heim Street, has in his collection the skeleton of a Rhinoceros, 
which is considered to have been the largest ever seen in 
this country. 
I took advantage of Mr. Brooks's kindness, not only to 
compare all the fragments of these bones, with the entire 
ones in the skeleton, but also to measure with some accuracy 
the length and breadth of the metacarpal bone in the fossil 
state and that in the skeleton, so that we might form some 
comparative idea of the size of the two animals, to which 
they belonged. 
The skeleton stands 5 feet 8 inches high, the metacarpal 
bone is 7-f- inches long, inches broad. The metacarpal 
bone, in a fossil state, is inches long, and 2^ inches broad. 
All the bones appear to have belonged to Rhinoceroses of 
nearly the same size, except the cotyloid cavity of the left 
scapula, which evidently was part of the skeleton of a smaller 
animal, and the olecranon of the right fore leg of one still 
smaller. 
It is deserving of remark, that all the bones found in this 
cavern belonged to the same species of animal. Great pains 
were taken to ascertain whether there were any other bones 
than those sent up to London, but no others were discovered. 
Professor Brande, Secretary to the Society, analysed a 
portion of one of the bones and a portion of one of the teeth. 
He remarked, that he had never met with fossil bones so 
purely earthy, and free of extraneous matters. 
When the bone was heated, it exhaled scarcely any smell 
of animal matter, nor had it lost any of its natural whiteness. 
