130 ME. G. BUSK ON THE ANCIENT OR 



perished, and left their bones on the surface, all of which could scarcely ha\'e been 

 completely devoured by the small Fox or the Weasel, which have long constituted the 

 only predaceous mammals. If the Ape were one of the ancient fauna, the total absence 

 of its bones in the breccia would be very remarkable ; and even if, as is commonly 

 supposed, it is a modem importation, it is equally surprising that none of its relics 

 should have been met with on the surface or in the chinks and crannies into which 

 they would be washed by the autumnal floods, in which situation the bones of Rabbits, 

 Foxes, Cats, and Dogs abound '. 



I cannot better conclude these remarks than by copying from Dr. Falconer's notes 

 (written ten or twelve years since) his statement of the points which at that time he 

 thought were distinctly established, and which even now seem to me, as they did then, 

 to include nearly all that can be said upon the subject in a general point of view : — 



1. It has been argued, and, we think, with reason, that the fossil bones and other 

 extraneous materials which occur in ossiferous breccia occupying fissures connected with 

 the surface, furnish at the same time an accurate idea of the animal population of the 

 land immediately subsequent to the disturbances which caused the rents, and a fairly 

 approximative idea of the period when these disturbances took place ; for the open 

 crevices must have received the washings of the surface, swept in by atmospheric 

 agencies, subsequently to their formation, and could have received no others. 



It is not a little remarkable that, within that portion of the European area 

 where caves and ossiferous fissures abound, not a single instance has been recorded on 

 good authority of a Miocene mammalian form, either in cave-deposits or bone-breccia ; 

 and Dr. Falconer has endeavoured to show that, at any rate in England and Wales, the 

 line of demarcation is so well defined that the caves were manifestly filled after the date 

 of the Boulder-clay, none of the old Pliocene forms being ever yielded by them ; and 

 the same observation applies in a general manner to Germany, Belgium, France, and 

 Italy. 



2. The general aspect of the Gibraltar mammalian fauna is quaternary, one of the 

 principal forms being Rhinoceros hemitceclms, which occurs so abundantly in the valley 



' Most inquirers who have entertained the question have arrived at what appeared to us the correct opinion, 

 that the few (not more than a dozen) [in 1864] Apes now found in the more inaccessible parts of the Eock are 

 of quite recent importation, or the offspring of parents introduced within a few years from the opposite coast-. 

 Whatever may have been the case formerly, they may now be considered virtually extinct regarded as indi- 

 genous animals ; and Captain Sayer states that he had traced an " old paper in the British Museum which 

 makes mention of a large quantity of these Apes having been sent into the garrison in 1740, and refers to a 

 poU tax to which they were subjected, like Jews, Moors, and other aliens," in the iron age of despotic rule in 

 Gibraltar (' History of Gibraltar,' 1862, p. 444). It may nevertheless be readily conceived that when Calpe 

 was as well clothed with forest as Abyla now is on the opposite coast, and the physical conditions admitted 

 the Hyena, Leopard, and Ehinoceros to pass from Africa into Spain, these species might well have been 

 accompanied by Macacus inuus. It is reserved for some future explorer of the ossiferous breccia to determine 

 this interesting point. 



