244 Dr. S. Woodicard — On Cave Hunting. 



certainly did not come from Dax, and Dr. Forsyth Major concludes 

 (after careful comparison) that they may have been brought from 

 Cyprus. It is very interesting, archseologically, to find that at the 

 end of the seventeenth century the ossiferous breccias at Chrysostomo, 

 near Kythrsea (Hagia Marina), in the district of Nicosia, where 

 Miss Bate obtained some of her collection, were looked upon a& 

 sacred relics which the Greek inhabitants worshipped, and that 

 these very bones of the pigmy hippopotamus were passed off upon 

 the pious as those of their saints ! and were thus accidentally 

 introduced to the attention of Cuvier and De Blainville a hundred 

 years ago ! 



A still more interesting discovery has rewarded Miss Dorothy 

 Bate's labours in the bone-eaves of Cyprus, namely, the discovery 

 of a new species of pigmy elephant in the same ossiferous deposits 

 which contained the pigmy Hippopotamus minutus. But we will 

 allow Miss Bate to tell the story in her own words.^ 



" While still in Cyprus the receipt of a grant from the Eoyal Society 

 in April, 1902, enabled me to devote a considerable amount of time 

 not only to making more extensive excavations in some of the caves 

 previously found, but also to a search for further cave deposits. I con- 

 fined my attention chiefly to the Keryina range of limestone hills in 

 the north of the island, in the hope of finding bone caves containing 

 other remains than those of the pigmy Hippopotamus, of which 

 Dr. Forsyth Major has already given a short description- from 

 specimens discovered by myself. 



" In this search I was at length successful, although it was not until 

 a certain amount of tentative digging had been carried on in four out 

 of five newly discovered deposits that work was started on what 

 appeared at first to be the most unpromising looking place which had 

 been found, and was consequently the last to receive attention. 



" However, during the first day one of the workmen found, not 

 far from the surface, part of a tooth which was at once recognised as 

 being that of an elephant. After this discovery every effort was made 

 to procure a complete collection of the remains of this species, but at 

 no time were either teeth or bones found to be so plentiful as those 

 of Hippopotamus minutus, with which they were associated. 



" Often not a single proboscidean tooth would be obtained during 

 two or three days' work, and only eleven molars and parts of molars 

 were procured as the result of three weeks' digging. It was then 

 decided to continue excavations here for a short while longer, and 

 this was done until the end of July, work being again resumed in the 

 beginning of the following October. 



'' Altogether a good series was obtained of the teeth of this elephant, 

 which is found to be a pigmy species. With the exception of the 

 first milk molar (m.m. 2), specimens were procured of all the milk 



1 ' ' Preliminary Note on the Discovery of a Pigmy Elephant in the Pleistocene of 

 CyiJrus." By Dorothy M. A. Bate. Communicated by Henry Woodward, LL.D., 

 F.R.S., F.G.S., V.P.Z.S., late Keeper of Geology, British Museum (Natui-al 

 History). Bead May 7, 1903. Proc. Eov. Soc, pp. 498-500. 



2 Proc. Zool. Soc, June 3, 1902. 



