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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
been subjected to oscillations of level during the Tertiary- 
period, is clear and decisive. Professor Graudry has proved, in 
his work on the fossil remains found at Pikermi, that the plains 
of Marathon, now so restricted, must have extended, in the 
Meiocene Age, far south into the Mediterranean, to have sup- 
ported the enormous troops of hipparions and herds of ante- 
lopes, the mastodons, and large edentata, revealed by his 
enterprise. The rocky area of Attica, as now constituted, 
could not have afforded sustenance for such a large and varied 
group of animals, nor would the broken hills and limestone 
plateaux have been inhabited by hipparions and antelopes, if 
their habits at all resembled those of their descendants living 
at the present time. It may, therefore, reasonably be con- 
cluded that Grreece, in those times, was prolonged southwards, 
and united to the islands of the Archipelago by a stretch of 
land ; and if Africa were then, as now, the head-quarters of the 
antelopes, it is very probable that one of the lines by which 
they passed over into Europe, and spread over France and 
Germany, was in this direction. Nevertheless, it must be 
admitted, that the changes of level, which have taken place 
since the Meiocene Age in those regions, are so complicated as 
to render it almost impossible to restore the Meiocene geo- 
graphy. 
In the succeeding, or the Pleiocene Age, the presence of the 
African hippopotqpaus in Italy, France, and Germany, can only 
be accounted for by a more direct connection with the African 
mainland than is offered by a route through Asia Minor. It 
would seem, therefore, that then the Mediterranean Sea could 
not have formed the same barrier to the northern migration of 
the animal which it does now. In many regions, however, the 
present land has sunk beneath the sea ; and marine strata, of 
Pleiocene Age, are accumulated in the Val d’Arno, Sicily, and 
southern France. 
In treating of the physical conditions of the Mediterranean | 
area in the Pleistocene age, I shall first of all take the evidence 
of the mammalia, and then compare it with that offered by the , 
varying depth of the sea at the present time, following out an 
idea suggested by the late Dr. Falconer in a speech before the 
British Association in 1863. The mammalia of the Iberian 1 
peninsula will be taken first. ' 
The researches of Captain Broome, Professor Busk, and of Dr. | 
Falconer,* in the bone caves of Gibraltar, carried on through a i 
long series of years, have established the fact, that African i 
animals lived in considerable numbers on and around that | 
I 
* Falconer Palaeont.Mem. ” vol. ii. Busk, International Congress.'^ j 
Prehistoric Archaeol.” Norwich. I 
