56 Annals of the South African Museurji. 



springs seem to have weathered much more rapidly than else- 

 where." 



It is difficult to speak with any degree of authority of a deposit 

 which one has not personally inspected, but from the tenor of the 

 letter here given, which is in answer to direct questions sent by me, 

 as well as from the examination of the implements, I am led to 

 conclude, until further investigations disprove my conclusions, that 

 the Cradock deposits imply a contemporaneity between the large 

 bouchers and the small or only comparatively large scraper-knives 

 quite equal to that of the Nooitgedacht deposit. In one case there 

 were no " bushman" implements found together with these palaeo- 

 liths ; while in another the latter were found on the fringe of 

 the "bushman" deposit, which is almost wholly confined to the 

 river-bank. 



We have thus probably a repetition of an instance of denudation 

 by rain-wash, the same as in the Stellenbosch, Simondium, and 

 other sites, only that at Cradock the smaller implements have not 

 been carried away, or only partly so, into the streams or rivers. 



The "Nooitgedacht" and Baekly West Deposits. 



At a place called " Nooitgedacht," close to the Vaal River, in what 

 is called here the " dry diggings " for diamonds, there have been 

 found scraper-knives, and small and large bouchers made mostly 

 of diabasic rocks, all mixed together. 



This find is of very great interest, as showing more conclusively, 

 perhaps, than even the Tyumi Eiver deposit, that knives and 

 scrapers of the Mousterian type were made or used by the same 

 people who manufactured the large bouchers of the chellean- 

 mousterian form. 



Miss Wilman '■'- who sent me some of these implements, so 

 abraded that identification was difficult, and whom I had asked to 

 ascertain if there were old or recent river- terraces near the deposit, 

 wrote as follows : — 



" The Nooitgedacht implements, big and small, all occur together 

 in a bed of gravel that is being worked on the water's edge of the 

 river (Vaal). In fact, the diggers have been flooded out at times. 



" The diggers have removed the overlying sand at A and are 

 clearing out the gravel at B for sifting and sorting. All the imple- 

 ments sent come from B. This, then, is the lowest terrace, and 



* A former assistant of this Museum, and now in charge of the McGregor's 

 Memorial Museum at Kimberley. 



