  We provide a Maltsev characterization of congruence distributive varieties by
showing that a variety $\mathcal {V}$ is congruence distributive if and only if
the congruence identity $\alpha \cap (\beta \circ \gamma \circ \beta )
\subseteq \alpha \beta \circ \gamma \circ \alpha \beta \circ \gamma \dots $
($k$ factors) holds in $\mathcal {V}$, for some natural number $k$.
