ITALY. 
215 
such as Buccinum undaUim and Gyprina islandica, which no 
longer inhabit the Mediterranean. According to the definition 
ordinarily accepted in northern Europe, this stage would be 
called Pleistocene, not Pliocene. 
In northern Italy this highest, or Sicilian, division has not 
been recognised, at least as a marine deposit. The elevation of 
such recent marine strata in Sicily and in Calabria appears to 
be connected with the formation of Mount Etna. So much has 
been said about the appearance of certain northern forms in 
the Italian Pliocene strata, that while in Italy I especially 
inquired of Prof De Stefani whether any of them occurred in 
Tuscany. He had not seen one species, for these northern forms 
appear to be almost entirely confined to the Sicilian stage, or 
Pleistocene. In more than one museum in Tuscany I observed 
specimens incorrectly labelled Tellina baUhica. They did not 
belong, however, to that species, but apparently to a form like 
the common Crag Tellina obliqua, though considerably smaller. 
Only two northern forms are included in Messrs. Ponzi and 
Meli’s list from Monte Mario, near Kome.* This list contains 
153 species, of which 30 are extinct, or about the same pro¬ 
portion as in the Upper Red Crag, with which the deposit may 
be correlated. 
When the Coralline Crag fauna is compared with that of the 
Mediterranean region, it is with the existing Mediterranean 
species, not with the Pliocene ones, that we find the greatest 
resemblance. One cannot help being struck with the number of 
common Coralline Crag shells, or at any rate of mollusca closely 
allied to those of the Coralline Crag, that can be picked up 
during a stroll on the shore, or found in the fish-markets at 
Naples. Still the faunas are not identical, and the Coralline 
Crag mollusca have not simply migrated southward, as the 
climate changed. The Mediterranean and the Celtic regions are 
characterized by numerous forms which have survived for long 
periods in the one area, but are never found in the other. The 
climatic changes have not sufficed to destroy the evidence that 
the two regions have for many ages belonged to distinct sub- 
provinces, probably seldom with any very direct communication. 
The free-roaming sharks point more clearly than the mollusca 
to the similarity of the present temperature of the Mediterranean 
to that found in our latitudes in early Pliocene times. The 
sharks commonly exposed in the fish-market at Florence during 
my visit were Carcharias, Garcharodon, Notidanus, and 
Oxyrhina —the last three common genera of our Nodule Bed. 
There was one point which in visiting the Mediterranean 
region I was anxious if possible to settle. Could we anywhere 
match the peculiar calcareous deposit which forms the Coralline 
Crag? Contemporaneous cementing of the sea-bottom into a 
hard mass—one of the most interesting peculiarities of the 
* Mem. M. Accad. dei Liricei, ser. 4, vol. iii., p. 672. (1887.) 
