ON^ARCH^OLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN MALTA. 213 



directly on the rock, which is O'lS below its upper surface. It is 

 confined on the N.W. by a curving wall, but its limits towards the 

 S.W. cannot be fixed. 



To the S. of the building is a well. Lower down the slope are some 

 very uncertain traces of walls of which nothing definite could be made. 



II. 



Tal Herba and Burmeghez Fissures. By Dr. G. Despott. 



Tal Herba Quarry. This quarry, which is known to the people of 

 the locality as ' II Barrira tal Herba ' or ' II Barrira tal Guzzu,' is 

 situated on the right side of the road which leads from Luca to Micabiba 

 or Mkabba, and is only about 200 yards away from the first houses of 

 this last village. At present it is no longer a quarry, but has been 

 filled with red earth and is being used as a field where crops are regu- 

 larly grown. The fissures in this quany are two, which we will call 

 Fissure 1 and Fissur^ 2. 



Fissure 1. — This fissure was dug by me, assisted by my friend Mr. 

 Carmelo Eizzo, the Engineer to the Public Health Department. A.s 

 could be judged from a section of it which still remained when we first 

 saw it, it was bell-shaped, very like the surface fissures at Burmeghez, 

 which place is only at a short distance to the N.W. of this; human 

 bones having been found in these fissures we naturally expected to find 

 the same in the present one too. The original opening to this fissure 

 was also similar to those of Burmeghez, being at the top, and had a 

 diameter of two or two and a half feet. (When I say at the top, I 

 mean in a vertical and not in a slanting position, like many of the 

 openings to the other fissures.) The depth was a little over six feet, 

 and its greatest width eight feet. At a distance which varied from two 

 to three feet from the opening it was filled with the usual red earth, 

 this being of a lighter colour at the surface. 



On our arrival at the place the workmen at the quarry presented to 

 us some loose bones which looked very like heads of the limb-bones 

 of an elephant. As these, however, were not found by us in situ, we 

 decided to discard them, knowing, moreover, that such bones could be 

 secured from a locality near Mkabba, known as Gaudia fissure. The 

 first piece of bone we found in our digging was the right part of a 

 mandible of a pig (Sus scrofa). A few inches further down the remains 

 of a stag {Cervus elaphus var. barbarus) were found, and these con- 

 tinued till a depth of about a foot; together with these was also found 

 a part of a marine bivalve {Tapes decussata). 



At this place, i.e., at about one foot from the surface, a plastron 

 from a carapace of a tortoise, probably a fresh-water species, was 

 found, and to a depth of more than two feet these remains continued; 

 amongst them we could identify six humeri of the same side, showing 

 thus that the remains belonged to at least six individuals, and these 

 must have varied in size from six to say eight inches. Some of the 

 plastrons were still adhering together, but as they were so very friable 

 and the earth of a rather hard consistency, it was very difficult to 

 extract them whole. With the tortoises we found also the remains of 



