Stone Implements. 303 



ments made of pure Quartz, of which I can also show you some 

 South African ones, and we find there exactly the same cuts, and 

 consequently the same design, as in those made of flint and quartzose 

 sandstone. How the makers managed to cut the Quartz in this 

 fashion is a mystery to me. and it certainly could only be the result 

 of an art practised for ages, and handed down from generation to 

 generation. The Quartz implements in the Albany Museum come 

 from Xamaqualand, Bushmanland, and Port Alfred, and their distri- 

 bution seems therefore not to^ be governed by the occurrence of 

 more easilv worked material suitable for the manufacture of stone 

 implements. There is some evidence also to show that there was 

 some traffic carried on in suitable material [as also in paints] so that 

 we find stone implements in localities which do not yield these 

 materials. This was already noticed by Mr. A. Brown in the vicinity 

 of Aliwal North (" Cape Monthly Magazine." New Series, I., p. 367). 

 In spite of numerous enquiries. I have never yet met anybod} who 

 had seen an arro\\- made by South African natives with a stone 

 arrow-head. A Mr. W. C. Palgrave forwarded in 1870 from the 

 Northern border an arrow actually used by natives in that region, into 

 the end of whi^h a small leaf-shaped arrow-head of quartz 

 crystal was inserted. This, as far as I know, is the only direct 

 evidence to show that the things we call " arrow-heads " have reall\ 

 been used as such in this countrv. Bits of glass have also been used 

 for the same purpose, but iron and bone tipped arrows seem to be 

 the only ones used nowadays, and as the use of iron was known to 

 the Hottentots and Bantu tribes before the advent of Europeans, it 

 is most likely that stone arrow-heads were discarded even before 

 Europeans landed in South Africa. Can it he that the 

 Hottentots learned the use of iron from the incoming Bantu tribes, 

 and then discarded the use of certain stone implements? This is 

 one of the questions w^hich a systematic exploration of the kitchen- 

 middens along our coast will probably solve. My own knowledge 

 of them is too fragmentary to be used for general conclusions of 

 value, but it seems to me that there is a gradation observable in them, 

 and that in the most recent ones there is less diversity in the stone 

 implements than in the more ancient ones. 



Leaving the innumerable scrapers, knives, and similar imple- 

 ments which are in our collection aside. I wish first to call your 

 attention to a neat little saw which we owe to Dr. Howard, who 

 found it in Bushmanland. Stone-saws from the Cape Flats are 

 ahead V mentioned in the "Cape Monthly Magazine" of 1870 

 (p. 238), but ours is the only instance that has come to my knowledge 

 of a South African stone implement that must have been a tinv saw 

 and nothing else. Its use was probably connected with the manu- 

 facture of arrows. 



There are about 70 of the .so-called digging stones in the col- 

 lection of the Albany Museum. It seems to me that they have all 

 been made of river-nodules, though there are two round lumps of 

 rock, one from Griqualand West, the other from the Albert district, 

 which the donors. Mr. E. J. Dunn and Dr. R. Kannemever, F.L.S.. 



