684 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



honey, and for tobacco they substituted hemp, which is said to 

 be potent smoking. After a good day's sport they held a feast 

 and spent the rest of the evening in dancing and singing. 



The Bushmen were an eminently artistic people. We have 

 already admired their paintings, but, like Solutrian man, they 

 also engraved animal figures on the rocks, not, however, by 

 incised lines, but by punching holes, so that the resulting line 

 was "dotted." 1 A case has been recorded, however, of an 

 antelope graven in relief, and another actually drawn with 

 incised lines. 2 It has been asserted that the Bushmen painters 

 and the Bushmen sculptors belonged to different branches of 

 the race, but this is open to doubt. 



They did not go altogether without clothing, and on state 

 occasions dressed themselves in rich mantles of fur. Great 

 care was expended on the preparation of these ; the skin was 

 first cleaned of all fat and superfluous material by scraping 

 with a flint implement, it was then rendered soft and supple by 

 stretching, rubbing between the hands and trampling with 

 the feet. Both sexes adorned themselves with beads made 

 from fragments of ostrich-shell ; the shell was broken into little 

 angular pieces, a hole was drilled in each piece with a flint 

 borer, and then the corners were rounded off and the edges 

 smoothed away. Necklaces of these white beads look well 

 against the warm brown tint of the skin. Certain districts 

 possessed a reputation for making these beads, which were a 

 regular article of commerce. 



The Bushmen were intensely fond of music, and had made 

 greater advances in this art than any of the other races of 

 South Africa; appropriate music and song accompanied each 

 of their numerous dances. Of their musical instruments 

 especial mention may be made of the four-stringed harp which 

 had been evolved out of the bow, and of a combination of 

 twelves bows which formed a primitive dulcimer. 



We may recur for a moment to the Bushman's paintings in 



1 I shall not readily forget the surprise with which I came upon the figure of 

 an antelope outlined on the surface of a roche moutonnee which was glaciated 

 during the upper Carboniferous epoch : this was near Riverton, on the Vaal ; 

 Stow mentions a finely sculptured eland in the same locality. 



2 L. Peringuey, " On Rock-gravings of Animals and the Human Form, etc.," 

 Trans. South African Phil. Soc. 1906, xvi. It may be noted that some of the 

 Solutrian drawings are pointille's. 



