1338 North Staffordshire Naturalists^ Field Club. 



genus Anoploiherium, and is not known from deposits older tlian the 

 Miocene. 



Discussion. — The Chairman called attention to the remarkahle association of 

 forms among the fossils described by Prof. Owen. 



Prof. Busk remarked that the materials at command seemed to him insufficient for 

 the establishment of new species. He observed that the distinctive characters of 

 Stegodon sinensis appeared to be very slight, and that the Hyeena was probably 

 S. spelma.. The tooth of Rhinoceros might be a milk-molar oi R. sumatranus. 



Mr.. Boyd Dawkins suggested that, as the specimens were obtained from apotheca- 

 ri€S, there was no evidence of the contemporaneity of the fossils. 



Mr. II. Woodward stated that Mr. Swinhoe had himself obtained a series of these 

 fossils from a cave many miles inland, he believed on the course of the Yang-tse- 

 kiang. Mr. "Woodward also called attention to Mr.. Hanbury's paper on Chinese 

 Materia Medica, in which many fossil teeth of mammalia are noticed. 



Prof. Owen, in reply, stated that great quantities of the fossils had passed through 

 his hands, and that he had selected for description those which, from their minute 

 agreement in chemical and other characters, might justly be inferred to be derived 

 from caves of the same age. 



3. "Further discovery of the Fossil Elephants of Malta."^ By 

 Dr. A. A. Caruana. Communicated by Dr. A. Leith Adams, F.G.S. 



The author described a new locality in Malta in which the re- 

 mains of Elephants had been found recently — the Is-Shantiin fissure 

 at the entrance of Micabbiba. It was filled with a compact deposit 

 of red earth, containing fragments of limestone, many teeth and 

 fragments of bones of Elephants, associated with bones of large 

 birds. The author found three small shark's teeth, and a small 

 tooth which he regarded as belonging to Hippopotamus. He indi- 

 cated the nature of the teeth and bones of Elephants found by him 

 in the newly discovered fissure. The whole of the five localities in 

 which ossiferous fissures have been discovered are in the same part 

 of the island ; and the author concluded, with some remarks upon the 

 geological conditions under which the remains of mammalia must 

 have been accumulated, and upon the probability that a connexion 

 then existed between Malta and Africa. 



In a note appended to the paper, Dr. A. Leith Adams stated that 

 the supposed tooth of Hippopotamus was a germ true molar of one 

 of the pigmy elephants, and that the shark's teeth have probably 

 been derived from the Miocene deposits. 



Discussion. — Prof. Busk remarked that there was no doubt that three species of 

 elephants had lived in Malta. 



Capt. Spratt said that it appeared to him that the chief interest of the communica- 

 tion lay in the greater comparative abundance of the larger species of elephant in the 

 new locality. 



North Stafforbshire Naturalists' Field Club. — At a meeting 

 of this Club, held at Leek, on the 24th February, Mr. W. Molyneux, 

 F.G.S., read a paper on the Ehaetic Beds of Needwood Forest. During 

 an examination of the gravels which cover the high grounds on the 

 margin of the Trent vallej', west of Burton- on-Trent, Mr. Molyneux 

 detected pebbles of sandstone and limestone, containing numerous 

 fossils, which at first he could not identify. These were determined 

 by Mr. C. Moore, F.G.S., and found to be peculiarly Eheetic in their 

 character. Patches of Lias are laid down in two places on the 

 Geological Survey map, — at Christchurch-on-Needwood and at Bagot's 



