162 
POPULAE SCIENCE EEVIEW. 
The African elephant* was obtained from three caves : from 
that of San Theodora, by Baron Anca ; from Grrotta Santa, near 
Syracuse, by the Canon Alessi ; and from a cave near Palermo, 
by M. Charles Graudin. It is obvious that the presence of 
this animal, as well as of the spotted hysena in Sicily, can only 
be accounted for on the hypothesis that a bridge of land 
formerly existed, by which they could pass from their head- 
quarters — that is to say, Africa. On the other hand, the pre- 
sence of the grizzly bear and of the Elephas antiquus im- 
plies that they passed over into Sicily from their European 
head-quarters before the existence of the Straits of Messina. 
The larger species of hippopotamus, doubtfully referred by 
Dr. Falconer to the H, major { = H, amphibius), may have 
crossed over either from Italy — where its remains are very 
abundant in the Pleiocene and Pleistocene strata — or from 
Africa. 
Nor are we without indications — from the distribution of 
one of the fossil mammals — of the position of the land that 
formerly connected Sicily with Africa. The small species of 
hippopotamus (-ET. Pentlandi), almost as small as the living 
H, Liberiensis, occurs in incredible abundance in the Sicilian 
caves ; and it has also been discovered by Capt. Spratt and 
Dr. Leith Adams in the bone-caves of Malta, along with the 
pigmy elephant (Elephas Falconeri) and a gigantic dormouse 
(Myoxus Melitensis). A tooth belonging to the same animal, 
preserved in the British Museum, was obtained by Dr. Leith 
Adams from Candia. In 1872 I was enabled to extend its 
range to the mainland of Europe by the identification of a last 
lower true molar in the Oxford Museum, which was obtained by 
Dr. Eolleston from a Grreek tomb at Megalopolis, in the Pelopo- . 
nese, and which was probably derived from some of the many 
caves in the limestone of the district.! For this extinct ani- 
mal to have spread from Sicily to Malta, from Malta to Candia, 
and from Candia to the Peloponese, or vice versa, these three 
islands must have been united together, and have formed the 
higher grounds of a land now submerged beneath the waves 
of the Mediterranean. We may therefore infer that Sicily 
was connected with Africa by a southern extension of the land, 
in the direction of Malta. 
If the African mainland extended to Europe in the directions 
* Falconer, Op. cit. ii. p. 283. 
t It was very probably interred for some superstitious reason. It is 
by no means improbable that the Greeks used fossil bones and teeth as 
medicine, just as the Chinese do at the present time. In the Middle Ages 
they were eagerly sought for in the caves of the Hartz, and figure largely 
in all the old pharmacopoeias. 
