CHAP. X. OSSIFEROUS CAVES IN SICILY. 175 



Palermo. If in the neighborhood of that city we proceed 

 from the sea inland, ascending a sloping terrace, composed of 

 the marine Newer Pliocene strata, we reach about a mile from 

 the shore, and at the height of about one hundred and eighty 

 feet above it, a precipice of limestone, at the base of which 

 appear the entrances of several caves. In that of San Giro, 

 on the east side of the bay, we find at the bottom sand with 

 marine shells, forty species of which have been examined, and 

 found almost all to agree specifically with mollusca now 

 inhabiting the Mediterranean. Higher in position, and 

 resting on the sand, is a breccia, composed of pieces of 

 limestone, quartz, and schist in a matrix of brown marl, 

 through which land shells are dispersed, together with 

 bones of two species of hippopotamus, as determined by 

 Dr. Falconer. Certain bones of the skeleton were counted in 

 such numbers as to j^rove that they must have belonged to 

 several hundred individuals. With these were associated the 

 remains of Elephas antiquus and bones of the genera Bos, 

 Cervus, Sus, Ursus, Canis, and a large Felis. Some of these 

 bones have been rolled as if partially subjected to the action 

 of water, and may have been introduced by streams through 

 rents in the hippurite limestone; but there is now no 

 running water in the neighborhood, no river such as the 

 hippopotamus might frequent, not even a small brook, so that 

 the physical geography of the district must have been alto- 

 gether changed since the time when such remains were swept 

 into fissures, or into the channels of engulfed rivers. 



No proofs seem yet to have been found of the existence of 

 man at the period when the hippopotamus and Elephas an- 

 tiquus flourished at San Giro. But there is another cave, 

 called the Grotto di Maccagnone, which much resembles it 

 in geological position, on the opposite or west side of the Bay 

 of Palermo, near Garini. In the bottom of this cave a bone 

 deposit like that of San Giro occui"s, and above it other 



