510 MR. BUSK ON THE FOSSTL ELEPHANTS OF MALTA. [June 27, 
June 27, 1865. 
Professor Huxley, F.R.S., V.P., in the Chair. 
The following extracts were read from a letter addressed to the 
Secretary by Robert Swinhoe, Esq., H.B.M. Vice-Consul, Formosa, 
dated Takow, S.W. Formosa, 27th March, 1865 :— 
«A friend of mine, who has been some time located in the river 
Yangtsze, at Chinkiang, tells me that large herds of a Hog Deer are 
found periodically on an island in that river. These animals have 
coarse bristles and pig-like faces, with tusks. I have never seen the 
animal, but from his description should take it to be the Hyelaphus 
porcinus. It swims across to the island at the flooding of the great 
river, and when the water sinks is left isolated, owing to the high 
banks of the island. It then lurks about the bushes and high coarse 
erass. Parties of Europeans and Chinese then land on the island 
with fire-arms and make easy prey of the poor beasts, driving them 
from one end of the island to the other. Every season large numbers 
of them are thus slaughtered. They are rather coarse eating, but 
are said to make pretty fair venison when hung for some days. I 
have lately procured you a fine female of the Cervus taivanus; it 
has gone on to Hongkong, and I trust will be thence forwarded all 
safe to you. 
“I am sorry I cannot give you any particulars as to the where- 
abouts exactly of the pair of Sus*, which I obtained for the Society 
in July 1862, and one of which reached you in safety. The person 
from whom I got the pair told me he purchased them off a boat in 
Dampier’s Straits. This is all, I regret to say, I can tell you about. 
their origin.” 
The Secretary announced the safe arrival in the Society’s Gardens, 
on the previous evening, of a young male African Elephant, received 
in exchange from the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. 
Mr. G. F. Busk communicated a memoir upon the fossil Elephants 
of Malta, based upon collections formed in that island by Captain 
Spratt, R.N., which had been originally placed in the hands of the 
late Dr. Faleoner for examination. Upon Dr. Falconer’s decease, 
Mr. Busk had undertaken the task of identifying these remains, 
which he was induced to refer to three species of the genus Hlephas. 
One of these, not much inferior in bulk to the existing Indian Ele- 
phant, was, as Dr. Busk believed, probably referable to Elephas 
antiquus. The two others were both of diminutive stature as com- 
pared with the existing species of Elephant, neither of them having 
exceeded 5 feet in height. To one of these, slightly the larger of 
the two, Mr. Busk proposed to restrict Dr. Falconer’s name Elephas 
melitensis, and to call the other and smaller one after the lamented 
naturalist who had done so much towards increasing our knowledge 
* Sus, sp. 235 of ‘ List of Vertebrated Animals,’ 1865, p. 37. 
