32 Annals of the South African Musc^ivi. 



lean (Figs. 18, 76, 77, 79). Some were found in association with 

 larger implements, others by themselves. 



It is not unreasonable to suppose that they were made either by,, 

 or for the children, and possibly also for the women. 



The singular implement, Fig. 23, PI. III., is of a type that has been 

 discovered hitherto in the Berg Eiver Valley (Cape Colony) only. 

 Three are known from Wellington, and I lately discovered two more 

 at Simondium, where there is what I consider to be the oldest 

 station yet found, lying together with some of the best finished and 

 largest palaeoliths it has been my good fortune to discover, as well 

 as with still more numerous unfinished ones. 



I think that the explanation corroborated by the figures here given 

 makes it quite clear that the makers of these palsoliths fashioned at 

 the same time two kinds of bouchers : a pick more or less sharply 

 pointed at one end, and a cleaver or hand-wedge more or less broad 

 at the cutting edge, both edge or point of which, in nearly all 

 cases, show conspicuous marks of wear. 



The hand-picks do not, however, imply agricultural pursuits in the 

 sense of crop-growing. 



Man of the Middle Pleistocene was small, about five feet in height. 

 It is hardly probabi^e that he trusted either singly or collectively ta 

 his strength alone to attack or repel the ferce naturcB that threatened 

 his existence, or to capture those that were necessary for his suste- 

 nance. Probably armed with a heavy club, he entrapped the 

 game required for his food and clothing, and this he did by snares 

 or pits. 



If the original maker of these South African bouchers, which 

 are almost identical with the European, is, as I really believe, 

 the ancestor or descendant of the negroid race that left traces 

 of its industry and culture in Southern and perhaps also in 

 Central Europe, then the use of these implements, whether made 

 of quartzite or of flint, is now explained. Either he imported 

 into Europe the methods to which he has long been accustomed 

 in Africa for trapping and securing the produce of the chase; or, 

 if he is not the native of this country, he brought to Africa, during 

 his long peregrinations, to the further progress of which the Ultima 

 Thide of the South put an insuperable obstacle, methods borrowed 

 from those people w^hom he has encountered and from whom he 

 has borrowed. 



We kpow that until lately drives, leading to pits and trenches 

 garnished with pointed stakes at the bottom, were used in South 

 Africa for securing game. In the Humansdorp District of the Cape 



