1867.] SPEATT MALTESE BONE-CAVES. 295 



Now, as Malta and Gozo were most probably elevated above the 

 sea at the close of the Miocene period (since there is no indication of 

 any purely marine deposit of a more recent time upon them anywhere), 

 it is therefore very possible that the caverns formed by the long- 

 action of the sea upon the first upraised zones may contain the relics 

 of animals of more than one, if not of each, subsequent geological 

 period ; and we may possibly with reason infer that there are 

 some of them with animal remains characteristic of one era only, 

 and others of another, according to their local convenience, at the 

 several periods, for the resort of the associated animals of prey, and 

 from their size and situation &c. 



Thus we may have caverns that, although formed simultaneously 

 and at the same level, may be foand to contain now the debris of 

 extinct animals of distinct geological times, precisely as seems to be 

 indicated by the facts before noticed in reference to the distinct 

 Mammalia that characterize the Hippopotamus-cavern near Crendi 

 and the Elephant -caverns near Zebbug. 



Dr. Leith Adams and Captain Hutton have both communicated, 

 through the Geological Magazine*, that they have found the remains 

 of the Elephant in the scattered debris of subangular fragments and 

 red earth which occur in fissures and hollows in various parts of 

 the island of Malta, and which I believe to be due to a wave 

 of translation rather than to river-floods, and to have resulted from 

 a huge wave-stroke from the subsidence of neighbouring lands, or 

 from a sudden subsidence of the greater part of Malta itself below 

 the sea at a very recent geological period, but which subsidence was 

 of too short a duration to produce a purely marine deposit — since no 

 perfect marine shell is common to any of the debris, although entire 

 land shells of existing species are very numerous. 



Therefore the Pigmy Elephant and its associates seem probably to 

 have become extinct during the Post-Pliocene period, when the sub- 

 sidence took place ; for fragments of this drift deposit, or debris, are 

 found on several parts of the low coast as well as in the interior. It 

 closely resembles a drift-deposit that occurs along the whole of the 

 lower part of the African coast, extending between Alexandria and 

 Tripoli, in which marine and blown sands are mingled with beds of 

 red earth, and sometimes small subangular fragments of the adjacent 

 rocks, as well as entire land shells in the sandy or red earthy de- 

 posits, just as occurs in the Malta drift-beds. It contains no entire 

 marine shells, only small fragments of the harder marine species, 

 showing that no tranquil condition of the waters existed for any 

 time during the accumulation of this drift, but that it is clearly due 

 to waves of translation that swept the adjacent plains and lower 

 hills during sudden and brief submergences that have occurred on 

 the African coast, at least three times on the Tripoli and Cjrene 

 coasts and other places eastward towards Alexandria, as I have 

 briefly shown in the Geological Appendix to ' Travels in Crete,' 

 vol. ii. 



The most instructive of these beds of debris on the coast of Malta 

 * Vol. ii. p. 488, and Vol. iii. p. 145. 



