OF WESTERN EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN COASTS. 
959 
breccia show no traces of gnawing. Besides, in one case, the breccia is confined 
entirely to the outside of the cave, where it is not probable that the Hippopotamus 
remains would have escaped destruction by the Hysenas which frequented the same 
district. Nor could the bones have been washed and transported by river- or sea- 
action, for they are mostly splintered and in fragments, and are neither worn or rolled.* 
It is evident also that the animals must have died on or near the spot where their 
bones are found, and that their accumulation is due to causes other than the foregoing. 
It was suggested by Dr. Falconee, that the bones were those of successive gene¬ 
rations of Hippopotami, which went there to die. But this is not the habit of the 
auimal. Sir Samuel Bakee, in his many years’ experiences in the Soudan, and on 
the borders of Abyssinia, where Hippopotami live in large herds, makes no mention 
of such an instinct,t nor does he allude to any circumstances which could possibly, 
under the ordinary conditions of life, have led to such local accumulation of their 
bones. Under ordinary circumstances, their dead bodies, like those of other wild 
animals, are devoured by Carnivora, or rapidly disappear from the surface under 
atmospheric and other agencies. Even supposing the accumulation of the bones to 
have been effected in some way by successive additions, the usual weathering would 
have caused great inequality in their state of preservation, whereas, as a rule, all the 
bones in the breccia seem to have been in the same almost fresh state, with the 
exception of the specimens near the surface, which have lost more of their animal 
matter. Besides, as the bones are those of animals of all ages —including the unborn 
—this fact is, I think, conclusive against this explanation. 
The circumstances, therefore, which led to these remarkable accumulations of the 
remains of the Hippopotami must have been extraordinary, and I see no hypothesis 
which meets the case, so well as the one that I have suggested to account for the 
bones of Mammalia in the Bubble-drift and in the ossiferous fissures, though the local 
conditions in this case are peculiar. 
On the submergence of the Sicilian area, the wild animals of the plains would, as 
in the case of Santenay, Cette, and Gibraltar, be driven to seek refuge on the nearest 
adjacent high ground and hills. In the instance before us, the animals must have fled 
to the amphitheatre of hills which encircle the plain of Palermo on all sides except the 
sea, and on the slopes of which the Cave of San Ciro and the others are located. As 
* SciNA was of a different opinion. He thonght that the bones had been transported from a distance 
—drifted in by marine currents. But, in that case, all the bones together with the limestone fragments 
should have suffered equally, whereas, it is evident from his remarks, as well as those of Chmstie, that 
the roUed fragments constitute the exception. These may have been formed when the sea entered the 
cave (c, fig. 19), and caught up afterwards in this Rubble-drift as were the beach pebbles in the head 
at Saugatte and La Motte. Or weathering by the percolation of water may have had something to do 
with the removal of the angles of the limestone fragments and of some of the bones. 
t Mr. Hudson, however, mentions one instance of an animal resorting to a given spot to die. It is 
that of the Huanaco : ‘ The Naturalist in La Plata,’ p. 318, 1892. This was also noticed by Darwin. 
