278 TRANSACTIONS OF SOCIETIES. 



to the present been practically confined to the Kolar Gold Field, on the 

 mines of which the author was employed from 1894 to 1896 in erecting 

 and starting new plant. The work accomplished during the subsequent 

 seventeen years was outlined, and the gradual development of the cyanide 

 process, from its first introduction there, to the present day, was described. 

 — " The recovery of black sand and floating particles of metallic minerals " : 

 J. M. Neill. The author emphasised the desirability of extracting, 

 collecting, and treating separately all the black sand, of which some 

 happens to be on the amalgamated copper plates, and is at present collected 

 rather incidentally. The sand consists mainly of iron sulphide, but contains 

 a large quantity of gold, with small quantities of iridium, osmium, platinum 

 and other metals of that group. Careful extraction and treatment of this 

 valuable constituent of the ore leads to considerable gain in recovery, and 

 suggestions were made for the treatment to be employed, in which connec- 

 tion a specially designed apparatus had been patented. 



Royal Society of South Africa. — Wednesday, 19th March : Dr. L. 

 Peringuey, D.Sc, F.E.S., F.Z.S., President, in the chair. — "The Antiquity of 

 Man" (Presidential address) : Dr. L. Peringuey The various stages of 

 the production of artefacts in the shape of stone implements were briefly 

 traced. The eoliths were then discussed in more detail, and the theory, 

 that accidentally pointed or sharp edged flakes were the precursors of the 

 later carefully trimmed amygdaloid tools, was examined. Attention was 

 drawn to the fact that most South African lithic implements consisted 

 of quartzite, indurated shale, quartz, or hard volcanic rocks, such as 

 basalt. Believers in the authenticity of the so-called eoliths had to assume 

 in support of their theory anthropomorphous apes or simian-like men, 

 semi-human precursors to whose hypothetical existence, as an explanation 

 of the oligocene flints, no one now pays much attention. The theory of 

 the simian origin of Man was still being entertained by some antiquarians 

 in 1894, when remains of an animal, to which Dubois gave the name of 

 Pithecanthropus, or monkey-man, were unearthed in Java. The position 

 of this animal in the scale of humanity is certainly not accepted by all 

 competent men in the way that its discoverer wished, Virchow, in fact, 

 affirming that the Java remains did not all originate from one individual, 

 but that the skull was that of an ape, and the thigh-bone that of a man. 

 In the Lower Tertiary (Oligocene) in Egypt what is apparently an anthro- 

 pomorphic ape (Propliopithecus) has been found, but, unfortunately for 

 those who hold to the theory of the artefact character of the oligocene 

 flints, such an ancestor of Man could not have been physically able to 

 chip flints, for its size scarcely exceeded that of a new-born infant, while 

 even the Anthropodus of the Lower Pliocene must have been about the 

 size of a twelve-year-old child. At Ipswich a skeleton has been discovered 

 which is said to represent pre-Boulder clay Man, but on this point the 

 statements made with regard thereto are not very reassuring. After 

 describing the Neanderthal skeletons, and the splendidly worked imple- 

 ments which accompanied them, the author discussed the evidence afforded 

 by the lithic industry of South Africa in connection with the antiquity of 

 Man. No discoveries have hitherto been made to substantiate the 

 presence in South Africa of a Man belonging to the Neanderthal race. 

 but Ins tools were present in abundance. The presence of the amygdal- 

 oidal boucher contemporaneously in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America 

 suggests migration, and the incredible number of these tools in South 

 Africa suggests a population much more dense than that of the middle 

 Palaeolithic of Europe. Evidence points to the evolution of the boucher 

 in South or Central Africa, and therefore postulates for its maker a greater 

 antiquity than that of the Neanderthal Man. In the Vaal River gravels, 

 where molar teeth of the Mastodon have been found, there are also (at 

 Windsorton) almost innumerable hand wedges, indicating the possibility 

 that in South Africa Man was contemporaneous with the Mastodon, the 

 greatest antiquity yet attributed to him, unless the Mastodon continued 

 longer in South Africa than in Europe. 



