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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
we opine, be accounted for on other grounds than what have 
just been surmised. 
The discoveries of Baron Anca in the caves of Sicily have 
resulted in showing the presence of savage men in that island, 
in conjunction with the large deer, hog, and other recent 
animals. He has likewise established beyond a doubt the 
presence of the African elephant in a fossil state in that island, 
which, when coupled with the circumstance that the sub- 
marine plateau called Adventure Bank, stretching between 
Sicily and the African Continent, is only fifty fathoms under 
water, it may readily be supposed that there was a communi- 
cation between the two lands at no very distant period. 
Moreover, the caverns of Palermo have furnished abundant 
remains of a hyena apparently identical with the spotted 
tiger- wolf ( Grocuta maculata), which, like its congener of the 
Gibraltar fissures, has been driven back to Southern Africa. 
The Elephas antiquus has also been discovered in the cave 
deposits ; and besides the Hippopotamus Pentlaudi , teeth of 
seemingly another species, perhaps identical with the undeter- 
mined river-horse of the Maltese caves. At the same time, 
late researches have shown that as regards dimensions of 
teeth, the fossil specimens of the Nile river-horse ( H . am- 
phibius) have been found as large as the huge fossil H. major 
of Northern Africa and Europe ; whilst the H. Pentlandi of 
the Sicilian, Maltese, and Candian caves comes nearest to the 
dimensions of a seemingly living species (H. annectens) far 
above the cataracts of the Nile. Another species (H. Siberi - 
ensis ), from Western Africa, intermediate in size between the 
last and H. ampliibius, might turn out the same as the 
undetermined species in Sicily and Malta. Thus it is not 
improbable, when the fossil river-horses have been more 
carefully compared with the living, that all the so-called 
extinct representatives of the genus still exist on the African 
continent, and, like the canine and feline mammals referred to, 
have been forced back. 
In summing up the evidences presented by the data referred 
to, it may be generally stated that the two continents had 
a land communication at no very remote period, when many 
quadrupeds now repelled to Central and Southern Africa were 
plentiful, at least as far north as 40° latitude ; and ibex, bears, 
oxen, deer, &c., now well nigh exterminated in Europe, 
roamed in vast numbers over Spain and the South. The 
Etruscan, but more especially the Leptorhine rhinoceros, seems 
also to have been then plentiful, whilst vast herds of river- 
horses issued from the ancient Nile, Po, and extinct rivers 
and lakes of the submerged lands, and spread themselves over 
what is now the basin and islands of the great inland sea ; at 
