304 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



consider as digging stones in process of manufacture. In the first, 

 however, I cannot see any clear evidence of human workmanship, 

 while the other is evidently only a core from which chips have hern 

 .struck. Most of them are made of a close-grained sandstone, only 

 one, which is unfinished, is made of a hard plutonic rock. The holfsi 

 are, as a rule, biconical, having been started simultaneously on both 

 .sides, but there are some with more or less cylindrical holes, which, 

 according to a MS. note by Dr. Kannemeyer, were finished with an 

 iron tool. As a rule the holes are central, only one .stone has an 

 eccentric hole. Many of these implements are more or less globular, 

 and these are. according to Dr. Kannemeyer, of Bushman origin, 

 while others, which are flat, are supposed to be of Hottentot manu- 

 facture. Whether this distinction is valid appears to me to be 

 doubtful. Most likely the shape of the.se implements was deter- 

 mined by the material most readily available. 



The size of these implements varies considerably. The largest 

 globular one has a diameter of 5:^ inches, the largest flat one has 

 a diameter of 7 inches, while the smallest is only a little over i inch 

 broad. The weight also varies correspondingly, the largest weigh- 

 ing nearly 6 lbs., while our smallest only weighs not quite 2 J oz. 

 (There is even a smaller one in the vSouth African Museum.) That 

 many of these stones were used for weighting sticks when digging out 

 bulbs, roots, etc., seems to be beyond doubt. Several eve-witnes.ses 

 have testified to this effect, but we must not suppose that even those 

 which were suitable for this purpose were exclusivelv u.sed for it. 

 Thus, Mr. Harn,- Barber told me that he saw in the interior a native 

 blacksmith using two as protection from the fire for the ends of the 

 tubes of his bellows, and I have no doubt the Bushmen and 

 Hottentots, used them also for other purposes. A few of ours show 

 signs that they were used as rubbers, or grinders, and hammers. 

 There are also a good many which, on account of their small weight, 

 could never have been of any use for weighting digging sticks. 

 Most of the.se were probably used for the ready manufacture of 

 knobkerries, and the writer in the "Cape Monthly Magazine" of 

 1870 (p. 239), already several times referred to. writes in confirmation 

 of this view : — " From Wupperthal I hear that the oval perforated 

 stones were used by the old Hottentot warriors as weapons of war, 

 a stick of hardwood being thrust into the hole." 



Sir John Evans, in his " Ancient Stone Implements, etc., oi 

 Great Britain " (2d. ed., 1897, p. 229, fig. 157), looks upon these round 

 l)erf orated stones as hammers, but very few of our specimens show 

 signs that they have been used as such, nor does his figure of a 

 specimen found at Stifford, near Gray's Thurrock, suggest in the 

 least its u.se as a hammer, yet other .specimens to which he refers 

 show such apparent bruising at the end that they must have seen 

 hard service, and for these his interpretation mav be correct. 



A number of specimens which he figures and describes (Chap. 

 X., p. 238) " have cavities worked on either face, so deep and 

 identical in character Avith those which, in meeting each other, pro- 

 duce the bell-mouthed perforations commonly present in the hammers 



