﻿lxvi PROCEEDINGS OE THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



analogous to those near the East Croydon station and in many parts 

 of the valley of the Thames. The late Professor Edward Eorbes, in 

 his remarkable paper on the Eauna and Elora of the British Isles 

 (pp. 343 & 346), observes that " no geologist doubts the ancient 

 union of the two sides of the Channel ; " and he considers that union 

 to have existed as late as the post-pliocene age ; for he says that 

 "during the post-pliocene epoch, over the elevated bed of the glacial sea, 

 the great mass of the flora and fauna of the British Isles migrated 

 from the Germanic regions of the Continent." We know that only a 

 very moderate change in the configuration of the two coasts has taken 

 place during the more than 1900 years since Julius Caesar crossed the 

 Channel. Even if the Channel was first formed by a sudden break 

 and sinking of the land, we cannot conceive so vast a gulf to have 

 been worked out into its present forms on both sides by the wearing 

 action of the sea, except during a period of vast dilation. 



The discoveries by Dr. Falconer and Baron Anca of siliceous stones 

 in forms that are evidently the work of man, mixed with the remains 

 of extinct species of quadrupeds, in the island of Sicily, are associated 

 with phenomena which indicate that a rupture in the continuity of 

 a continental land took place subsequently to the existence of man, 

 on a still greater scale than the channel which separates England 

 from France ; for they can only be explained by assuming that the 

 land now forming the island of Sicily was at that period a part of 

 the continent of Africa. Not only have bones and teeth of the ex- 

 isting African Elephant and Hyaena been found in great abundance, 

 but such enormous quantities of the bones and teeth of the Hippo- 

 potamus, that they were carried, for a short time, in ship-loads to 

 France, in the expectation that they might be used as agricultural 

 manure, until it was discovered that they were so far fossilized as to 

 have lost their gelatine. Now it is clear that the African Elephant 

 and Hyaena could only have come by land to those parts of Sicily 

 where their remains are now found. The distance between the 

 nearest part of Sicily and the coast of Africa, that is, between Mar- 

 sala and Cape Bon, is not more than about eighty miles ; and Admiral 

 Smyth, in his memoir on the Mediterranean, states (p. 499) that 

 there is a subaqueous plateau, which he named Adventure Bank, 

 uniting Sicily to Africa by a succession of ridges about a spot where 

 he found from 40 to 50 fathoms of water. 



In a communication lately made to our Society by Captain Spratt, 

 relative to a cave near Kredi, on the south side of the island of 

 Malta, in which there was a stalagmitic bone-breccia, he informs 

 us that he discovered large quantities of the bones of the Hippo- 

 potamus. Malta is 58 miles from the nearest point of Sicily, and 

 179 from Cape Demos, the nearest point of the mainland of Africa. 

 Between Malta and Cape Passaro in Sicily, the charts give sound- 

 ings of 28, 62, 93, and 30 fathoms. 



As the shaped stones are, in the opinion of Dr. Falconer and Baron 

 Anca, so associated with the bones of the quadrupeds as to lead to 

 the inference that the hands which fashioned them must have been 

 contemporaneous with the animals, that part of the human race must 

 have been in existence at the commencement of the time required 



