1867.] SPEATT — MALTESE BONE-CAYES. 287 



Hippopotamus, which conjecture was confirmed by Prof. Owen on the 



exhibition of the teeth in the Geological Society's rooms in 1859 ; and 

 moreover they were then identified by him as the same species as that 

 found so abundantly in the bone-caves near Palermo and in other 

 parts of Sicily, viz. H. Pentlandi. These large mammalian remains 

 were overlain by a bed of similar stalagmite of one foot or more in 

 thickness, but without fossils, showing a period during which the 

 Hippopotamus had become extinct; and this was succeeded by another 

 stalagmitic bone-bed containing abundantly the bones and teeth of 

 a Eodent, named Myoxus Melitensis by Dr. Palconer. Besides the 

 Eodent bones, there were also the bones of Birds. Prom the frag- 

 ments of the flooring scattered with the debris under the quarry, 

 this upper stalagmitic crust enclosing the Eodent and Bird remains 

 was seen to have varied in thickness from 6 or 8 inches to a foot or 

 more in some parts of the cavern. 



On ascending to the quarry to learn from the quarrymen more of 

 the nature of the cavern when first discovered, we were informed 

 that it did not extend inwards more than about 40 or 50 feet from 

 the face of the clifi^; and at about that distance from it, within the 

 quarry, we were shown a portion of its stalagmitic flooring still in 

 situ, forming what appeared to have been the termination of a nar- 

 row recess at the inner end of the cavern. This fragment of bone- 

 breccia in situ exhibited the same arrangement as above described 

 from the debris of fragments ejected from the quarry ; that is, the 

 Hippopotamus-remains were entirely confined to the lower stratum, 

 and the Eodent and Bird-bones, with land shells of living species, 

 to the upper ; but it was composed at this part in situ of about a 

 foot of thinly stratified stalagmitic layers, with red earth or clay 

 between them, whence I swept up several handfuls of the fragments 

 of Bird-bones, and of the teeth and bones of the Eodent Myoxus 

 Melitensis, so named by Dr. Palconer, and described in a letter to me 

 soon afterwards as a Dormouse of twice or thrice the size of the 

 existing species. 



III. The Zebbtjg Ossieerotjs Caveen. 



Two years subsequent to the discovery of the bone-cave near 

 Crendi, another of more startling interest was discoverd, in the 

 centre of the island, near the large town of Zebbug. It was acci- 

 dentally struck upon in sinking an excavation for a tank, upon the 

 upper of the two terraces forming the garden of Signer Buttegieg, 

 on the north side of the rocky valley separating the towns of Zebbug 

 and Seggieni. The excavation for the tank had reached a depth of 

 10 or 12 feet in the native rock, when the roof of the cavern was 

 suddenly broken into, and it was found filled to the top with clay ; 

 and as it was much narrower than the intended diameter of the 

 tank, the excavation of the rock was continued down to the floor 

 of the cavern, viz. about 5 feet lower, thus separating the outer 

 portion of the cavern from its inner, as shown in the following 

 ground-plan (fig. 2). 



The openings leading off from the tank on each side into tho 



