290 EELIQUI^E AQUITANKLE. 



" Among some of the tribes a knowledge of letters is possessed, either of Chinese books or of their own 

 written language, which is supposed to be engraved on slips of wood or carved on palm-leaves. Some have 

 no knowledge of any written language or of a regular calendar. For records of events they use pieces of 

 carved or notched wood. Some tribes have writing, on sections of wood, in the seal character, which are 

 taken great care of, and may be of much interest from their antiquity." 



Page 193. Owner-marks. Besides the many examples of ornamentation on the 

 Spear-points, Dart-heads, and other implements of Reindeer-antler, found in the 

 Kesslerloch, near Thayngen, and figured in the ' Mittheil. d. antiquar. Gesell. in 

 Zurich,' vol. xix. part 1, plates 2-8, there are some incised markings which must 

 be regarded as Owner-marks, namely : fig. 15 (p. 26), angular and straight lines 

 arranged thus =~> ^> | ; fig. 33 (p. 43), like this p> <] >, perhaps 



imperfect, on a broken Dart-head. In fig. 43 (p. 31) the branched line crossing 

 a circle, though clear in the drawing, is of doubtful value. In fig. 13 (pp. 26, 27) 

 a groove, cut along two thirds of the tapering Dart-point, is succeeded by sixteen 

 transverse, parallel, short, broad notches, which fill the space between the lower 

 end of the furrow and the bevel of the wedge-shaped butt. The whole may have 

 constituted an Owner-mark (see B. Plate XXVI. fig. 1); or the groove may have 

 been intended for poison, and the notches may have marked a hunter's score. 



Page 197. Private Marks. On the Ramsgate steamers, newly arrived baggage 

 is marked by the porters with private chalk marks, which ensure the luggage 

 being left to the care of one special set of the porters. 



Page 200. With regard to the Pitted Markings on some implements, the late 

 Mr. Gay drew my attention to a set of Divination Dice (" De"s a deviner et a jeter 

 le sort "), from the Basutos, presented by Miss Powles to the Christy Collection. 

 They consist of: (a) three white (natural) astragali of small Deer or Antelope; 

 (6) three others stained dark red ; (c) four triangular pieces of small hoofs (Ante- 

 lope ?), three hollow and one solid, engraved on one or more faces with patterns 

 of pits, furrows, and raised lines ; (d) a flat finger-shaped piece of bone, engraved 

 on one side with five pits encircled by rings ; (e) a small skin bag, containing a 

 little red powder, resembling comminuted wood. The whole are closely strung 

 together on a thong. 



Somewhat similar Divination Dice are referred to by Henry Lichtenstein, in 

 his ' Travels in Southern Africa in 1803-06 ' (2 vols. 4to, London, 1815); at p. 332, 

 vol. ii., he figures three such dice (fig. 11; copied in Wood's ' Natural History of 

 Man,' "Africa," p. 323), and says :- 



" Fig. 11. The Magical Dice, made of the cloven feet of Antelopes as described in page 317. I could not 

 learn the signification of the figures carved on the outside ; one is not unlike the double Hebrew Schin, a 



