268 
THE MEDITERRANEAN NATURALIST 
During the Spring of the present year I was 
engaged in carrying out, with the aid of a money 
grant from the Royal Society, some excavations in 
the Har Dalam cavern, a subterraneous gallery- 
situated in a gorge of the same name in the eastern 
extremity of Malta, and after having excavated six : 
large trenches and obtained some hundreds of 1 
bones of Hippotamus pentlandi, Elephas mna- ; 
draensis , Cervus barbaricus, and numerous other 
animals, I had the satisfaction of discovering an 
entire ramus of the lower jaw of a Bear, Ursus 
arctos with its canine and molars in situ, as well as 
five other canines belonging to other individuals 
of the same species. 
The Trench in which the jaw and teeth were 
found is situated on the left-hand side of the 
cavern, at a distance of fifty feet from the entrance. 
The floor was strewn to a considerable depth with 
large boulders, which in some places were heaped 
up against the sides of the cavern to a height of 
from two to three feet. Having cleared a space 
of about thirty square yards, ! commenced opera- 
tions on a friable marly loam, which in this part 
of the cavern takes the place, as the surface layer, 
of the red soil that is found farther within. 
The excavation which, when finished, measured 
12 feet, by 10 feet, by 6 feet, exhibited in section 
the following sequence of deposits: 
A. A layer of rounded boulders that lay scattered 
over the floor to a depth of two feet. 
B. Cave-floor consisting of a friable marly loam, 
about nine inches thick, containing numerous 
land-shells, roots of plants, limpet shells, a shell 
of a Cerethium, and the vertebral of a small fish. 
These latter had evidently been introduced. 
C. A stratified layer of rounded boulders, inter- 
mixed with a grey marly loam containing an 
abundance of land-shells. 
D. A friable marly loam with a few pebbles. En- 
tire antlers, jaws, and limb-bones of Cervus bar- 
baricus, together with fragments of very old 
It is to the best of your important invest igations 
that I look most hopefully , i. e. that you may be 
able to supply the missing forms. Myself and my 
colleagues ( Busk and Sprat t ) wish you every s u<:c< x.s 
in your interesting investigation. In reply to this, 
Prof. Leith Adams notes. “ The missing link ho- 
wever, as regards carnivora , it w .is not my rare 
good fortune to FIND although I worked hard 
toivards that end." 
pottery, occurred in abundance. 
E. A layer of indurated, light-grey loam containing 
a few antlers, teeth, and bones of C. barbaricus, 
a jaw and five canines of Ursus arctos and 
remains of H. pentlandi. 
F. A layer of about 1 foot 6 inches in thickness, 
similar in composition to E, but more indurated. 
Lying at the base of this layer, and on the ori- 
ginal rock floor of the cave, were numeruux 
molars, portions of tusks, and limb-bones of 
Hippo. 
The first evidence of the presence of the car- 
nivore was a large canine, the fang of which was 
unfortunately broken by a ’.flow from the pick of 
one of the workmen, before the tooth was noticed. 
This discovery was soon followed by that of a 
complete ramus of the lower jaw, with its molars, 
and canine teeth in situ. 
The peculiar nature of the matrix in which it 
was embedded unfortunately prevented me from 
getting it out entire. The articular processes broke 
off, but a few fragments were recovered and pieced 
together. 
Four other canines were afterwards discovered, 
each of which was in a fairly perfect ^tate of pre- 
servation. One of the? Mr. A. S. Woodward, 
F.O.8. has determined as belonging to the left 
side of the mandible of a species of Cants equal- 
ling a wolf in size. Associated with these remains 
were found several vertebras and fiagments of 
limb-bones of hippo, and vertebrae and portions of 
horns of stags; but none of them presented any 
evidences of haying been gnawed. 
All of the layers in this section presented distinct 
evidences of stratification; but in the lower ones 
the thickness of the deposits and their conq arative 
homogeneity contrast strongly with the numerous 
thin layers of which the upper beds are composed, 
and with the assortment of boulders, pebbles, and 
organic remains of which they are made up. 
From the evidences thus afforded it seems that 
the deposits owe their origin to periodical flood- 
ings of the cavern, during which the remains that 
lay scattered over the cavern floor, near the 
mouth, were washed further within and were 
buried in the muddy sediments of the water. 
The state of mineralization in which the remains 
of the Hippo, t he Stag, and the Bear a, e, indicates 
that these animals occupied the Maltese area 
