429 
THE BONE- CAVERNS OF GIBRALTAR, MALTA, AND 
SICILY. 
BY A. LEITH ADAMS, A.M., M.B., F.G.S., &c. 
T HE explorations conducted by geologists of late years at 
various points on the sea-board and islands of the Medi- 
terranean, have elicited a mass of interesting data in con- 
nection with the pre-historic, or rather pre-modern, condition 
of that area, and the human inhabitants and lower animals 
that then frequented Southern Europe and Northern Africa. 
The information thus obtained has been chiefly educed from 
researches in the caves, fissures, and alluvial deposits of 
Southern Italy, Sicily, Malta, and the Rock of Gibraltar; but 
although the evidences furnished have been for the most part 
clear and decisive, they may be said to be little other than 
mere indications of what more extended researches will doubt- 
less bring to light, not only in the above situations, but in 
other unexplored islands and shores of the great inland sea. 
The appearances presented by the rock formations and super- 
ficial soils show that the present outline of the Mediterranean 
basin was, at least in part, brought about by subsidences of 
land, which in certain instances was afterwards re-elevated. 
For example, the denuded surface of the Maltese islands, and 
traces of wave action on their limestones and that of Gibraltar, 
as clearly point to action of the sea during their submersion 
or subsequent emersion, as do the pot-holing and scooping 
out now going on. The Sirocco and Levanter, that send the 
billows dashing furiously along the coast lines, are not fashion- 
ing sea-bottoms and margins in any way different from those 
now high and dry on the rock of Gibraltar, heights of Malta, 
or the limestone slopes of the Val di Noto ; whilst the faults 
and rents filled with red soil, and fragments of rock, and 
organic remains, show, by the extent of the former and the 
nature and modes of deposition of the latter, that subter- 
ranean movements on a grand scale had been at work in 
producing the one, and aqueous agencies had afterwards borne 
the others into their present situations. With reference to 
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