1897] ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN CAPE COLONY 335 
plants. This was dug out for material to construct the railway 
embankment close by, and when undisturbed was clothed with the 
ordinary dense bush of the district. The section showed from above 
downwards 4 to 5 feet of stiff clay overlying a foot of rolled gravel, 
the gravel resting on decomposed rock. The gravel had all the 
appearance of shot of all sizes, from buckshot downwards. A little 
above the gravel a large number of flint implements were found, the 
bulk of which appeared to be “rubbers” possibly used for dressing 
skins or similar purposes. There were a few spear heads, some 
fragments of coarse pottery, and a few limpets. 
This excavation is forty feet above the present level of the 
Quigney, and the gravel probably belongs to that river; the clay is 
assumed to be the accumulated wash from higher levels. The 
place appears to have been a workshop, for its position would afford 
the warmth of the morning sun with the coolness of shade in the 
afternoon. 
On the north bank of the Buffalo, about twenty chains from the 
river, and just W. of the road to the Pontoon, is the residence of 
Mr Gately. The house and grounds stand on the rounded top of 
an isolated knoll, which is connected with East London Hast by a 
narrow neck of land. This neck is the watershed of two small 
water courses which unite at the S. of the knoll, and run 8.W. 
into ‘Ist creek.’ On the top of the knoll there are from 2 to 
3 feet of black mud, separated from the base rock by 1 to 2 
feet of decomposed rock. The black mud is again seen to the E. 
of the road to the Pontoon. Im this black mud on the knoll Mr 
Gately has found round pierced stones, stone flakes, spear heads, 
coarse pottery, and teeth and bones of hippopotamus. The de- 
position of this black mud was contemporaneous with the two water 
courses when they were at a level with the top of the knoll. 
Fringing the whole of the south-eastern coast of South Africa 
there occurs in detached patches a peculiar wind-stratified calcareous 
sandstone. Cove Rock and Bats’ Cave at East London, the ‘ bluff’ 
at Natal, and the Sisters and Fountain rocks near the Fish and 
Kowie rivers, are conspicuous examples of the formation. At Cove 
Rock and Bats’ Cave it abounds in fossils, especially at the latter. 
These consist of land and sea shells, mammalian bones, chiefly 
ruminants, and teeth of hippopotamus, with remains of fishes, 
apparently all of recent species. The rude and shifting nature 
of the stratification leaves no doubt that this is an aeolian formation, 
and comparable to that of the adjoining sandhills. 
1 An idea is prevalent that the castor-oil plant might be profitably grown as a pro- 
ducer of a cheap lubricant. My own experience is, that it flourishes only where rivers 
have cut deeply into their banks and exposed deeply seated soils, or where deep cuttings 
are made, or around the earth-holes of the porcupine and ant bear. It springs up on 
this new soil with amazing rapidity, and crowds out every other plant ; but something 
ails it, as after a few years, whether cultivated or not, it dies down and disappears. 
