a long shirt and a plain bodice with very low neck.
All these statuettes are characterized by what is known as steatopygy,
that is, the over-development of the fat which lies on and behind the
hips and thighs.

Steatopygous figures have been found in many places, viz. France, Malta,
Crete, the Cyclades, Greece, Thessaly, Servia, Transylvania, Poland,
Egypt, and the Italian colony of Eritrea on the Red Sea. The French
examples are from caves of the palaeolithic period; the rest mainly
belong to the neolithic and bronze ages. Various reasons have been given
for the abnormal appearance of these figures. In the first place it has
been suggested that they represent women of a steatopygous type, like
the modern Bushwomen, and that this race was in early days widely
diffused in the Mediterranean and in South Europe. Another hypothesis is
that they represent not a truly steatopygous type of women, but only an
abnormally fat type. A third suggestion is that they portray the
generative aspect of nature in the form of a pregnant goddess.

Naturally there are considerable local differences in the shapes of the
figures from the various countries we have enumerated, and it may be
that no single hypothesis will explain them all.

There are other megalithic buildings in Malta besides the three which
we have discussed, but none of them call for more than passing mention.
On the heights of Cordin or Corradino, overlooking the Grand Harbour of
Valletta, there are no less than three groups, all of which have been
lately excavated. In all three we see signs of the typical arrangement
of elliptical areas one behind another, and in the finest of the three
the curved facade and the paved court which lies before it are still
preserved.

It was for a long time believed that there were no dolmens in Malta.
Professor Tagliaferro has been able to upset this belief by discovering
two, one near Musta and the other near Siggewi. It is hardly credible
that these are the only two dolmens which ever existed in Malta. More
will no doubt yet be found, especially in the wild north-west corner of
the isle.

The megalithic builders of Malta did not confine their achievements to
structures above ground, they could also work with equal facility below.
In the village of Casal Paula, which lies about a mile from the head of
the Grand Harbour of Valletta, is a wonderful complex of subterranean
chambers known as the Hypogeum of Halsaflieni, which may justly