166 MAMMALS. 



company with flints in forms evidently worked by the hand of man, and with the remains 

 of the existing African Elejjhant. These were discovered in the Grotto de Maccagnone, near 

 Palermo ; and it is an almost inevitable inference, that the Hippopotamus and other extinct animals 

 found there were contemporaries of man. The presence of the bones of these animals in Sicily 

 seems to imply the existence of dry land between Sicily and Africa at a period when man was 

 already an inhabitant of Europe. There is a subaqueous bank between Sicily, Malta, and Cape Bon, 

 which is doubtless the remains of such a former connexion. As Mr. Horner put it, in his anni- 

 versary address as President to the Geological Society in 1861, " There raust have been a continent 

 now submerged, with the exception of those parts of it that now form Sicily, Malta, and Gozo, 

 through which a great river flowed, in whose waters vast herds of these monstrous animals swam, 

 and on whose marshy banks they bred for successive generations."* — Perhaps there is no neces- 

 sity to say " a continent now submerged," but certainly there was dry land. 



The species of Hippopotamus which lived in these countries is thought by De Blainville to be 

 the same as the existing H. AMPiiiiiius. It is generally known, however, under the name of 

 H. MAJOR, the name given to it by Cuvier, who, however, made the mistake of describing it three 

 times under difierent names, his species H. maximis and H. antiquus being now regarded as mere 

 varieties referable to age or nutriment. The species found in the Sevalik formations are j)erfectly 

 distinct species (II. Sivalensis, Falc, &c.) among which number either the II. major or a closely 

 allied species also occurs ; and a fossil tusk has been received from Madagascar, where no Hippo- 

 potamus now occurs. 



When information as to the fossil fauna of Daricn was first received, remains both of the Hippo- 

 potamus and Sow were said to have been found there. This was afterwards negatived ; so that 

 the Hippopotamus still remains peculiar to the Old World. 



* "Proc. Geo. Soc," 1861. 



