104 
FOPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
the bones of some large bird, and what is of special interest, a worked flint, 
apparently of the barbed type. All these remains were below the level of 
the old stalagmitic floor. — Vide Geological Magazine , October. 
The Royal Society's gold medal was awarded at the anniversary meeting, to 
Joseph Prestwich, Esq., F.R.S., for his valuable researches in the Quaternary 
deposits of France and England, the results of which have already appeared 
in the Philosophical Transactions. The Quaternary deposits are those in 
which the remains of pre-historic man have been so abundantly found, and 
Mr. Prestwich’s inquiries have done much to show their relation to the 
question of man’s antiquity. 
The Maltese Bone Caves. — At the Birmingham meeting of the British 
Association, Dr. A. L. Adams and Mr. Busk presented a paper on this 
subject. There are two caverns in the island of Malta, one in the south-east, 
and the other in the centre of the island, in which remains had been found ; in 
the latter the remains being those s of the elephant, and in the former chiefly of the 
hippopotamus. Recently another cave on the south coast, and not 100 yards 
from the Phoenician ruins in that part of the island, had been discovered, and 
Capt. Spratt had found in it some remains, after which Dr. Adams proceeded 
with the further exploration of the cavern, resulting in the discovery of relics 
which proved that that part of the surface of the earth which now constituted 
the island of Malta was once the home of two species of pigmy elephant and 
one species of elephant of the size now existing. The island would not now 
yield a month’s food to many individuals of even one speeies of elephant ; 
therefore it must at one time have joined to the opposite coast of 
Africa; and in this opinion the authors of the paper were supported by 
other considerations. — Vide Hardwicke's Report of the Proceedings of the. 
British Association, 1865. 
A fossil spider, which was found in a piece of shale from the “ coal 
measures ” of Upper Silesia, has been described by Professor F. Romer. The 
specimen is beautifully preserved, and shows not only the four pairs of feet, 
with all their segments and the two palpi, but even the coriaceous integument 
of the body, and the hairs attached to the feet The interest in the discovery 
of this fossil lies in the fact that hitherto spiders have not been known from any 
rocks older than the Jurassic, and that now their existence in the Palaeozoic 
rocks is satisfactorily proved. From the resemblance to the recent genus 
Lycosa, and its occurrence in the coal measures, the new species has received 
the name of Protolycosa anthracophila. 
A cetacean vertebra which had been discovered in the valley of the Don, in 
Yorkshire, was exhibited by Mr. Hardy, at the meeting of the Manchester 
Philosophical Society, held on the 28th of November. The bone was met 
with in excavating, at a depth of 14 feet below the surface of the ground, in 
a bed of gravel overlaid by the alluvium of the valley. In answer to. 
questions put by Messrs. Binney and Hull, Mr. Hardy described the bone as 
one of the lumbar vertebrae of a species of whale, probably identical in genus 
with the Balaena of the present seas. The bone measured on its largest 
diameter a little over ten inches, in thickness seven inches, and in circum- 
ference about three feet. It presented every appearance of having lain in the 
earth for a very considerable length of time ; but as it only reached Man- 
chester on the day previous, the geological character of the gravel in which 
it was found had not been ascertained. 
