148 A NATURALIST ON THE "CHALLENGER." 



made the mounds (probably Bushmen). There are flat stones, 

 each with a long shallow groove worn on them, and small 

 cylindrical stones lying about which fit the hand, and have 

 evidently been used for rubbing up and down the grooves, and 

 have indeed thus worn them. The use of these grooved stones 

 is uncertain. The usual idea is that various bulbs and roots 

 used by the midden people were ground in them. Perhaps 

 they used them partly for pounding or rubbing tender the hard 

 muscular foot of Haliotis, Patella, and other Gasteropods, to 

 prepare them for eating. 



Haliotis (the large Ear-shell) is prepared now at the Cape 

 for eating by pounding, as also at the Channel Islands. The 

 Haliotis, as cooked at the Cape, is excellent, quite a luxury. 

 No iron is allowed to touch it in preparation ; it must be got 

 out of the shell with horn or wood implements, then pounded 

 with stone or wood and finally stewed. It is considered that if 

 iron touches the animal it becomes rigidly contracted and 

 hopelessly tough. It is quite possible that the popular opinion 

 may be correct, and that contact with iron may produce a rigid 

 tetanus of the muscles. 



Some of the grooved stones have grooves on both sides, one 

 groove having been evidently worn out. Some of the grooves 

 are as much as a foot long and two inches, or a little more, in 

 width. 



Besides these stones there are the well-known digging stones ; 

 circular disc-shaped stones, perforated in the centre. The stone 

 is passed over a stick, the lower end of which is hardened in the 

 fire or thrust into an antelope's horn, and the stick thus weighted, 

 is used by the Bushmen and Hottentots to dig roots. A Bush- 

 man whom the late Dr. Bleek, the distinguished South African 

 linguist, had under his charge, called the apparatus a squaw's 

 stick, because, of course, the squaws have to do the digging. He 

 showed us how it is used. 



Well-made spear and arrow-heads and scrapers are found 

 with these things, but are comparatively scarce, and far more 

 abundant on the Cape Flats. 



Very broken pieces of a coarse pottery are common about 

 the refuse heaps. The pottery is black, and seen on fracture to 



