38 Annals of the South African Museum. 



of similar tools for which a degree or character of great antiquity 

 may justly he claimed. 



One thing, however, we may consider as established. It was by 

 means of flaking or paring tools of the kind here figured, whether 

 very ancient or comparatively modern, that the cutting, scraping, 

 even sawing tools, with edges either worn or as sharp as if they were 

 made yesterday, were obtained or produced. With extremely rare 

 exceptions, and these possibly accidental, they show at the base, on 

 the reverse side, a conchoidal fracture so bulging, or they are so 

 incurved as to preclude even in the most lanciform examples the 

 possibility of their having been firmly hafted. 



We must regard most of them also as having been detached from 

 the nuclei merely for obtaining a cutting fool, a tool that could be 

 discarded at will — one that often served a momentary want, and on 

 which much care would not be bestowed. •= Their extreme abundance 

 seems to justify this hypothesis. 



The Nooitgcdaclit Deposit. — Although standing alone, the Tyumi 

 River deposit shows so clearly the connection of small or mode- 

 rately sized scraper-knives, with and without secondary trimming, 

 with bouchers of large and moderate sizes, but of an advanced 

 type, that their contemporaneity cannot be challenged. 



We owe, however, to Miss Wilman, of the Kimberley Museum, a 

 discovery of a similar nature as that of the Tyumi, only that the 

 scraper-knives are very primitive and the bouchers still more so. 

 This lady investigated in the dry diamond diggings of Griqualand 

 West, at a place called Nooitgedacht, on the Vaal Elver, a deposit 

 containing a great number of bouchers of both the digging or 

 cleaving forms. Some are extremely large, others are of more than 

 moderate size, but all are so worn and polished by water (no 

 other agency could have produced such a smooth surface) that 

 they have returned in many cases to their original state of 

 pebbles. They very much resemble the implements in PL IX., 

 Figs. 57 to 61, but are still more polished, or in a more deformed 

 condition. 



Intermingled in great quantity, and worn as smooth as the 



* Mr. liedmond Orpen told me some years ago how, when in company with his 

 uncle, C. SiiT Orpen, a buck was shot in Griqualand West, but when they came to 

 disembowel it, so as to make it lighter to carry to the waggon, they found that no 

 one had a knife. Undaunted by the untoward circumstance, the native who 

 accompanied them, and whose race is doubtful, knocked together two pieces of 

 stone, and produced from them an implement sharp enough to cut the animal 

 open. This anecdote is also found in Stow's "Native Races of South Africa," 

 but I had it before the publication of that book. 



