OSSIFEROUS CAVES IN THE NORTH OF SICILY.

Geologists have long been familiar with the fact that on the northern coast of Sicily, between Termini on the east, and Trapani on the west, there are several caves containing the bones of extinct animals. These caves are situated in rocks of Hippurite limestone, a member of the Cretaceous series, and some of them may be seen on both sides of the Bay of Palermo. If in the neighbourhood of that city we proceed from the sea inland, ascending a sloping terrace, composed of the marine Newer Pliocene strata, we reach about a mile from the shore, and at the height of about 180 feet above it a precipice of limestone, at the base of which appear the entrances of several caves. In that of San Ciro, on the east side of the bay, we find at the bottom sand with marine shells, forty species of which have been examined, and found almost all to agree specifically with mollusca now inhabiting the Mediterranean. Higher in position, and resting on the sand, is a breccia, composed of pieces of limestone, quartz, and schist in a matrix of brown marl, through which land shells are dispersed, together with bones of two species of hippopotamus, as determined by Dr. Falconer. Certain bones of the skeleton were counted in such numbers as to prove that they must have belonged to several hundred individuals. With these were associated the remains of Elephas antiquus, and bones of the genera Bos, Cervus, Sus, Ursus, Canis, and a large Felis. Some of these bones have been rolled as if partially subjected to the action of water, and may have been introduced by streams through rents in the Hippurite limestone; but there is now no running water in the neighbourhood, no river such as the hippopotamus might frequent, not even a small brook, so that the physical geography of the district must have been altogether changed since the time when such remains were swept into fissures, or into the channels of engulfed rivers.

No proofs seem yet to have been found of the existence of Man at the period when the hippopotamus and Elephas antiquus flourished at San Ciro. But there is another cave called the Grotto di Maccagnone, which much resembles it in geological position, on the opposite or west side of the Bay of Palermo, near Carini. In the bottom of this cave a bone deposit like that of San Ciro occurs, and above it other materials reaching to the roof, and evidently washed in from above, through crevices in the limestone. In this upper and newer breccia Dr. Falconer discovered flint knives, bone splinters, bits of charcoal, burnt clay, and other objects indicating human intervention, mingled with entire land shells, teeth of horses, coprolites of hyaenas, and other bones, the whole agglutinated to one another and to the roof by the infiltration of water holding lime in solution. The perfect condition of the large fragile helices (Helix vermiculata) afforded satisfactory evidence, says Dr. Falconer, that the various articles were carried into the cave by the tranquil agency of water, and not by any tumultuous action. At a subsequent period other geographical changes took place, so that the cave, after it had been filled, was washed out again, or emptied of its contents with the exception of those patches of breccia which, being cemented together by stalactite, still adhere to the roof.*

     (* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 16
     1860 page 105.)

Baron Anca, following up these investigations, explored, in 1859, another cave at Mondello, west of Palermo, and north of Mount Gallo, where he discovered molars of the living African elephant, and afterwards additional specimens of the same species in the neighbouring grotto of Olivella. In reference to this elephant, Dr. Falconer has reminded us that the distance between the nearest part of Sicily and the coast of Africa, between Marsala and Cape Bon, is not more than 80 miles, and Admiral Smyth, in his Memoir on the Mediterranean, states (page 499) that there is a subaqueous plateau, named by him Adventure Bank, uniting Sicily to Africa by a succession of ridges which are not more than from 40 to 50 fathoms under water.*

     (* Cited by Horner, "Presidential Address to the Geological
     Society" 1861 page 42.)

Sicily therefore might be re-united to Africa by movements of upheaval not greater than those which are already known to have taken place within the human period on the borders of the Mediterranean, of which I shall now proceed to cite a well-authenticated example, observed in Sardinia.