108 Annals of the South African Museum. 



the bouchers or the muller-brayers, they are found singly. I never 

 heard of them having been discovered either together, or in a number 

 that suggested their gradual accumulation in mountain or hill talus, 

 or in an alluvial deposit. Not only do they differ in this respect 

 from bouchers, but this very difference also implies a much more 

 recent origin. They are not uncommon in, or close to, the middens, 

 but there they are often broken ; are met on the veldt, without apparent 

 cause or reason ; are occasionally ploughed out ; and I make bold to 

 assert that there is not one district of the Cape Colony where they 

 have not been found. They are equally numerous in the Orange 

 Free State ; but seem to be scarcer in the Transvaal, and in 

 Natal. None has to my knowledge been found in Ehodesia, 

 probably because they have been overlooked ; they occur in the 

 Tanganyka Plateau (PI. XXL, Fig. 158), and Professor von Lushan 

 of the Berlin Ethnological Museum, informs me that he has several 

 from Kilimandjaro. They have lately been found a few miles south 

 of Khartum, and also in North Kordofan. I am informed, although 

 1 have not been able to verify my information, that they have been 

 met with in Somaliland. 



Similar implements, perforated in the same manner, are known 

 in Europe, and in South America, Figs. 159 and 160 of PI. XXL, 

 represent an example from the Atacama Desert in Chile. I am 

 not aware that they are found in Australia, and their absence there 

 coincides singularly enough with that of the bouchers of the Chel- 

 lean-Mousterian type. But there is no corollary with the bouchers 

 in point of antiquity. The European examples are unmistakably 

 neolithic, and not only so, but, unlike the " pygmies," it is not 

 possible to claim for them an early neolithic age ; they have been 

 found in sepultures associated with polished, as well as dressed, 

 stone-axes. 



The general acceptance of the use to which these perforated 

 stones were put is that they were intended to give weight to the 

 digging-stick, and there can be no doubt that even after the arrival 

 of the Colonists they still served that purpose. 



This is proved by the heart-rending account of Sparrman, travelling 

 at the time (1775) in what is now the Uniondale district of Cape 

 Colony : — 



" We saw, moreover, as we rode along (especially in Lange Kloof), 

 numbers of fugitive Hottentots of both sexes, who were not longer 

 pursued, partly on account of their age and infirmities, and partly 

 because it was not worth any Colonist's while to lay hold on them, 

 as they would be liable to be demanded back by their former 



