Miscellaneous. 95 
ston’s ‘western rainless district’ includes all this region, and all 
Syria with the Jordan, and its ‘former and latter rain,’ and the 
greatest part of the Tigris and Euphrates. While his ‘eastern 
rainless district’ includes the sources of nearly all the largest rivers 
of the old world —Your obedient servant, 
GrorGE GREENWOOD, Colonel. 
Brookwood Park, Alresford, Hampshire, July 13, 1864. 
Our Correspondent, F. F., Walgrave, is respectfully informed that 
‘Scriptural Geology’ is not within the scope of the GroLocIcaL 
Macazine. We shall be glad, however, to receive notices of any 
geological facts he may have to communicate. 
Mr. R. Sueeate, 15 Whitehall Place, favours us with a notice of 
the accidental finding of a piece of Teredo-bored wood in a rather 
large flint nodule from the Chalk of Hampshire. The flint filling 
the borings appeared to be slightly rayed from the centres. The 
specimen has been sent to the Oxford Museum. 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
+ 
Tue Foss. ELEPHANT or Matta.—More remains of this animal 
have been discovered by Dr. Leith Adams, F.G.S., in extensive excs- 
vations lately made by him among the cavern-deposits and breccias 
near Crendi. One of the chief points with reference to the fossil 
Elephant found in Malta is the small size of its teeth, which, coupled 
with other characteristics, leaves no doubt that it was not only 
distinct from any living or extinct species, but was, as regards di- 
mensions, a pigmy compared with them. It is supposed not to have 
been larger than a lion. Such relics, together with the bones and 
teeth of Hippopotami, &c., which of late years have been met with 
in great abundance in different parts of Malta and Gozo, tend to 
show that these islands are but fragments of what may at one time 
have been an extensive continent, in all probability connected with 
either Europe or Africa, or both. At all events, the physical geo- 
graphy of this portion of the Mediterranean must have changed very 
much since the above-mentioned animals wandered over our islands. 
Teeth and bones of the living Elephant of Africa, and another larger 
fossil species, together with the Hippopotamus, have been discovered 
by Baron Anca in the Palermo caves, thus showing that in all pro- 
bability no less than three distinct descriptions of Elephants and two 
species of Hippopotamus frequented an area embraced within the 
southern point of Sicily and Malta, and during the Post-pliocene 
period, when we find the earliest traces of man’s existence. None 
of the latter have yet been met with in Malta. But there is every 
probability that flint implements and such like will turn up, as they 
have in the Sicilian caves, more especially now that the attention of 
scientific inquirers has been earnestly directed to this important 
subject. Without the invaluable testimony afforded by the remains 
of the quadrupeds above mentioned, there are downcast fragments 
of the strata and faults along the shores of Malta, which testify to 
