The Stone Ages of South Africa. 51 



valley high above the river or nearly on a level with it, and seldom 

 accompanied there by chips which are not more in the shape of 

 spalls than of fiake-knives. The same conditions obtain in the other 

 river- valleys of South Africa. 



In most deposits the partially pared palteoliths are more numerous 

 than the better shaped tongue-implements, but this, I venture to 

 say, is ascribable less to the degree of the maker's skill than to the 

 greater resistance offered to the continuous action of rain-wash 

 which, gradually, brings the artificially worked stones from the 

 original position in which they were left or manufactured to a 

 lower level. The heavy, round, butt-end of a partly pared palaeolith 

 offers much more resistance to the denuding agent than the flat- 

 tened, almost navicular, tongue-shaped implement which rests on 

 a very much reduced surface (see profile of Figs. 1, 2, and 3). 



There is, therefore, no reason militating against the acceptance 

 for our South African palteoliths of as great antiquity as for the 

 deposits of the Pyrenees, of Spain or of India, where, as here, the 

 smaller artefacts in the shape of scraper-knives are equally I'are. 



Beukesfontein Deposit. 



A'ery primitive-looking are implements of a large type found in the 

 Ceres District of Cape Colony. They could not have attained a 

 much more water-worn aspect had they been rolled for centuries in 

 the shallow yet impetuous waters of a spruit — a treatment which they 

 evidently never experienced, this water- worn aspect being caused by 

 weathering alone. In this locality "''■ the outcrop of the bluish-grey 

 chert band of the Dwyka forms a little ridge, at the base of which 

 is a gentle slope of soft shales. This slope, for a distance of fully 

 200 yards from the outcrop of the chert band, is strewn with blocks 

 of chert and worked fragments of the same. There is very little soil, 

 as the shales crumble away into small fragments. It is therefore 

 impossible to determine what length of time the implements have 

 lain there. No small scraper-knives or flakes were found. 



But from the outcrop of the Dwyka chert band Mr. A. E. Walker, 

 one of the Museum Assistants, has brought back from Matjesfon- 

 tein (Cape Colony) a few implements, among which is a boucher of 

 moderate dimension, whose original facets have disappeared, and 

 which is as equally smoothed and pitted as any one example from 

 Beukesfontein. For an implement to be so closely pitted one must 

 assume a very long period of exposure to the elements. This 



* Described in Ann. Eep. of Geol. Com. for 1903, p. 25. 



