488 Adams—Fossil Elephant of Malta. 
Ill. History or tHe Discovery or THE Fossi, ELEPHANT OF 
Matta, wWitH A DESCRIPTION OF THE FISSURE IN WHICH IT 
WAS ORIGINALLY FOUND. 
By A. Lerra Apams, M.B., F.G.S., &e. 
abou Midsummer of the year 1857, when a quarry was being 
made in the soft calcareous sandstone in the district of Gandia, 
near the village of Micabba, Malta, one of the numerous fissures so 
common in all the formations of the two islands was observed to 
run in a straight line about E. and W. It was a simple vent, with 
several funnel-shaped expansions, and, as usual, was filled with red 
earth and stones. Among the débris of one of these expansions, 
several bones of large size attracted the attention of the workmen, 
and Dr. Speteri Agius, LL.D., a gentleman residing in the neigh- 
bourhood, having heard of the discovery, repaired to the spot, and 
picked up from among the exuvie a portion of a tooth and several 
fragments of bones, which he deposited in the Museum of the Maltese 
University. Shortly afterwards, a dispute between the proprietor 
and the lessee of the quarry put an end to the excavation, and the 
entire cavity was filled with rubbish, and levelled out into a field. 
In that condition it remained until reopened in June 1865. 
Reverting to the above-mentioned remains found by Dr. Speteri 
Agius: these included a portion of an upper penultimate true 
molar of Hlephas Melitensis, showing five disks of wear, the sixth 
plait fractured, and the remainder wanting; two heads of humeri ; 
portions of shafts of a femur, humerus, and fragments of other bones. 
In my memoir ‘On the Maghlak Cave and other Ossiferous De- 
posits found in Malta,’ read at a meeting of the Royal Dublin 
Society, November 18th, 1861, I adverted to this discovery, and 
stated my reasons for considering the molar distinct from that of the 
mammoth, to which it was then erroneously considered to belong ; 
surmising also, at the same time, that its characters more closely 
approximated to those of the African Elephant, in which sub-genus 
(Loxodon) it has since been placed by the late-Dr. Falconer. 
Such is the history of the discovery of this remarkable probos- 
cidian. Three years afterwards (1859), a rich collection of the 
teeth and other remains of this elephant were collected by Captain 
Spratt, R.N., from the débris of a cave near the village of Zebbug, 
and forwarded to the late Dr. Falconer. Descriptive details of the 
cave and its exuvixz were read by both gentlemen at the Cambridge 
Meeting of the British Association in 1862, when Dr. Falconer 
proclaimed the elephant to be a new species, and named it Elephas 
Melitensis. Further researches in caves, fissures, and alluvial de- 
posits in Malta have resulted in disclosing many more remains of 
this elephant, which undoubtedly roamed (and at no very distant 
period) in vast herds over the area, with two species of Hippo- 
potamus, a gigantic rat, birds of colossal dimensions, a lizard, and 
a land-turtie of an extraordinarily large size: at a time when the 
land-shells were identical with those now living on the island. 
Having long desired to examine the spot where the first traces of 
the Maltese Elephant had been discovered, and after many unsuc- 
cessful attempts to overcome foolish prejudices,—by no means credit- 
