and the Pheiiomena accompanying their Elevation. 29 



have a direction nearly parallel to the south coast of Sicily. 

 They will also be found to be nearly parallel to the chain of the 

 Pyrenees; from which circumstance, and from its having been 

 asserted that belemnites had been found in these islands, M. 

 Elie de Beaumont supposed them to be of the age of the chalk, 

 and to have been elevated between the periods of the chalk and 

 tertiary formations. I have seen no fossils here that could be 

 referred to the secondary class, and the belemnites which are 

 said to have been found, are probably nothing more than those 

 cylindrical shaped bodies, of which I have already made men- 

 tion, when describing the rocks of Noto, and which are also 

 found in great abundance in the fine soft limestone of Malta and 

 Gozzo. 



In almost all parts of the islands, the beds of limestone are 

 found to be traversed by great cracks and fissures, filled with a 

 breccia of red clay, and fragments of limestone. On digging a 

 drain near the new Naval Hospital, on the south-east side of 

 the harbour, and about 40 or 50 feet above the sea, one of those 

 fissures, of small dimensions, was cut across, and was found at 

 one spot to contain bones, some fragments of which were pre- 

 served by the workmen, but so much broken, and so imperfect, 

 that their characters could not be determined. At Mafra, on 

 the west coast of Malta, and opposite the island of Gozzo, I ob- 

 served a bed of a similar breccia, resting on the tertiary rocks, 

 and above it a bed of a loose calcareous sandstone, containing 

 fragments of shells, both dipping at a moderate angle under the 

 sea, and towards the north, and not reaching higher than 50 or 

 60 feet up the sides of the hills. This, as well as the breccia of 

 the fissures, corresponds, I should think, to the conglomerate 

 which I have described as occurring in various parts of Sicily : 

 My reasons for supposing so are, \st. Because it is superior to 

 the tertiary rocks ; 9.d^ Because it contains fossil bones ; and, 

 3f/, Because it has been elevated above the sea since its forma- 

 tion. 



Both of these islands are of trifling elevation, the highest 

 point in Malta, which is in one of the hills to the west of Citta 

 Vecchia, being only 590 feet above the level of the sea. Some 

 of the hills of Gozzo are probably a little higher. Upon looking 

 over a large manuscript map of the island, from a survey by 



