78 Annals of the South African Museum. 



The horse is manifestly not old geologically, and the same niay be 

 said respecting Bubalus, but at all events in the case of the latter, 

 whereas no one would be surprised to find its remains in marshy 

 spots or near banks of flowing rivers, one is indeed surprised to find 

 it in places now almost waterless, but probably made so by a gradual 

 rising of the coast belt, during which period the aboriginal was not 

 acquainted with the use of palaeoliths. 



On the other hand also, this aboriginal would, of necessity, 

 come to water, and the remnants of his domestic industry may 

 have been deposited there long after the animals had been laid 

 low. One of the femora of Bubalus had been split open as if to 

 obtain the marrow, but it is very difficult to decide if it be the work 

 of man or hyaena. 



And on the whole this restricted palaeontological evidence would 

 be of little weight were it not that in Algeria there have l)een found, 

 at the bottom of a small lake called Lake Karar, palaeoliths resem- 

 bling so much in shape and even material the South African ones as 

 to be almost indistinguishable. With them also were found small 

 pieces of the Cape Town Flats and Karroo type, the better trimmed 

 of which are made of flint ; but their contemporaneity, according to 

 M. Boule, who has investigated this deposit, with the quartzite 

 palaeoliths is doubtful.''' The numerous bones found with the Lake 

 Karar implements are those of Elephant, Horse, Hippopotamus, 

 Ehinoceros, Pig, Gnu, Bubalus, and Stag. The Elephant is an 

 extinct kind, but belonging to one more related to the Quaternary, 

 or even the Pliocene Elephants of Europe ; others, except the Stag, 

 are still living in the south of the African continent ; the Rhinoceros 

 is B. sivius ; the Gnu is probably Connocluetcs taurinus or C. gnu ; 

 the Horse, Equus burchelli. Sec. ; and the Buffalo, Bubalus antiquus, 

 does not seem to differ much from Bubalus baini, our extinct 

 species. 



But with implements of such ancient palaeolithic type one would 

 have expected to find remains of the animals that characterise the 

 finds at Chelles, &c. Why are not the Elephants, E. antiqiius or E. 

 meridionalis, Hycena spclcea or brunnea, the Stenon horse, Machau- 

 rodes or Ursus spceleus, represented in that deposit if its great 

 antiquity is to be assumed ? M. Boule admits that the Quaternary 

 fauna of Algeria and that of Europe do greatly differ. The former 

 consists of species that have migrated in the manner followed by 

 forms now northern, and the remains of which are found in the 

 European Quaternary deposits. 



* M. Boule, " Station Paleolithique du lac Karar," L'Anthropologie, xi., 1900. 



