H.—ANTHROPOLOGY 131 
that the fossil elephants found both in Sicily and Malta are dwarf forms 
of Elephas antiquus, which was widely distributed in Europe in early 
Pleistocene times. The fossil hippopotamus of these islands may also have 
been derived from the species which had already reached southern 
Europe in the Upper Pliocene. All the fossil mammals, indeed, have 
European or Asiatic, not African affinities. Associated with them there 
are no traces of Palzolithic man, such as must have occurred had the 
islands been a route for migration between Europe and Africa. I agree 
with Dr. Vaufrey that the two fossil human molar teeth from Malta 
which have been referred to Neanderthal man, are of both doubtful 
age and uncertain relationship. No Paleolithic implements have 
been found in Malta, and only very late Palzoliths occur in Sicily 
above the deposits in which the remains of dwarf elephants and hippo- 
potamus are met with. ‘The earliest stone implements in Malta are 
Neolithic. 
The latest discoveries of fossil mammals in the caves of Palestine and 
Syria, as interpreted by Miss Dorothea M. A. Bate, show that during the 
early half of the Pleistocene period, Asia and north Africa were much more 
closely connected than they have been since. The country was com- 
paratively well watered, with luxuriant vegetation and forests, and mammals 
could readily migrate both east and west. Even so characteristic an 
African animal as the wart-hog (Phacocherus) was then living in Palestine. 
The connection of Asia with Africa was thus as definite as that with 
Europe ; and the explanation of the partial identity between the Pleisto- 
cene mammals of Africa and Europe is probably, that they had a 
common source in Asia and diverged west in two different directions, 
one southwards, the other northwards. 
This conclusion is supported especially by the apparent origin and 
former distribution of the spotted (or cave) hyzna, Hyena crocuta. In 
the Pliocene deposits of the Siwalik Hills in northern India, there are 
jaws and other remains of hyznas which are not quite H. crocuta but 
may well represent its ancestors. By the Pleistocene period the typical H. 
crocuta was already in existence in India, as shown by a tooth discovered 
in the Karnul caves, Madras. Remains of the same species have also been 
found in Pleistocene deposits in central Asia and even in China. They 
are likewise widely spread over Syria and northern Africa, where only the 
striped hyzena (H. striata) lives to-day. H. crocuta, therefore, is not an 
African animal. It originated in Asia, spread thence in different direc- 
tions in the Old World, and has survived only in southern Africa, which 
is at one extremity of its former wide range. 
The origin of the lion is not so clear, but as it still lives in Asia and was 
widely spread there until recent times, it is at least as much an Asiatic 
as an African mammal. The same may be said of the leopard and the 
caffer cat, which are also found sometimes among the European Pleistocene 
mammals. As the tiger of Asia is still as characteristic of temperate 
regions as it is of the tropics to which it seems to have migrated only 
within comparatively recent times, and as the finest examples occur in 
the Altai Mountains, the original home of the great cats is probably in 
the north. ‘The fine cave lion of Pleistocene Europe, therefore, seems 
