OF WESTERN EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN COASTS. 
957 
Elephant had been worn down to the state of pebbles. It is evident, however, tliat 
these are the exceptions; they may have been derived from the old beach- or cave-beds.''^ 
Christie merely says that the breccia contains “ a prodigious number of fragments of 
bones with some rolled pieces and blocks of limestone.” Dr. Falconer makes no 
allusion to the wear of the bones, and the specimens deposited in the College of 
Surgeons have neither been worn or gnawed. Speaking also of the analogous breccia 
at the Grotta di Maccagnone, he says that the bones were all broken and splintered, 
and that none of them hove marks of gnawing. 
To obtain the bones, a cutting 6^ feet wide, and apparently about 20 feet deep, 
was made from the mouth of the cave to the slope outside, but no particulars of the 
section have been preserved. In the interior of the cave the upper part of the breccia 
was loose and pulverulent,! and the bones light and adhering to the tongue, but the 
greater part of it, both in the cave and outside on the slojDe, was extremely hard.;]; 
SciNA, however, says it was more compact in the cave, and that the bones in it were 
petrified and solid, carbonate of lime being the cementing and solidifying material. 
The same writer speaks of the breccia inside and outside the cave as one mass, 
whereas Christie thought there was a want of continuity between the two. 
Looked upon as a whole, the mass of debris which, near the entrance of the cave 
had a thickness of from 20 to 30 feet, closely resembles in its general character the 
Eubble-drift on slopes or over some of our Raised Beaches. Christie says that it “ has 
some appearance of being divided into strata as if deposited under water,” and here, as 
at Brighton and Sangatte, the coarsest bed lies on the top. According to the same 
writer, a similar calcareous conglomerate or breccia attains at the foot of Monte 
Pellegrino, a thickness of 40 to 50 feet, and contains blocks many yards in circum¬ 
ference. In this respect it resembles the breccia on the slopes at Gibraltar. Christie 
also remarks that “ This bone-deposit has more analogy to the bone-breccias that 
occur in various parts along the shores of the Mediterranean than to the bone-caves 
of the more southern parts of Europe.” 
The traces of old occupation of the cave of San Ciro by predaceous animals is more 
obscure than in the case of the Gower caves. If an old cave floor existed, it has been 
swamped under the great mass of breccia with the Hippopotamus bones. That there 
were, however, dens of Hymna fringing the declivities of that range of hills is certain. 
One was discovered by Baron Anca di Mangalaviti § between Palermo and Messina, 
in which a large number of bones and Coprolites of Carnivora, with Deer horns, and 
astragali of other animals, bearing the • marks of gnawing, have been found. The 
Baron also points out that, whereas in these caves bones of Carnivora and Deer are 
* Nine ElepEants’ teetE were found in the cave. It looks as tliongh the cave beds and tbe angular 
rubble (Rubble-drift) formed two distinct deposits, as in some of the Belgian caves (see fig. 12). 
t Apparently there was no stalagmite. 
t It was quarried outside as a building stone. 
§ ‘Bull. Soc. Geol. de France,’ 2nd ser., vol. 17, p. 680. 
