528 REPORT—1905. 
a gyeat age cannot be ascribed to them. These he considers to belong to a palzo- 
lithic type. He is also of opinion that a neolithic period was evolved from that 
palzolithic one, but was superseded by a more barbaric, more recent one, 7.e., by 
that of the ‘Recent’ age. There is, however, no evidence as to the epoch when 
one period replaced the other, and, as far as the implements of a paleolithic type 
are concerned, neither geology nor paleontology has as yet enabled us to assign a 
possible age to these implements. They abound, however, where they occur, 
and they have undoubtedly been brought down to their present situation from 
their once much more elevated position, and have thus accumulated on the lower 
part of the mountain talus, - The hardest kind of stone available has always been 
made use of. 
But if no evidence as to the age of that paleolithic type is to be obtained, there 
is ample evidence that that of the ‘ Recent Period’ ended only yesterday. Not 
only are these implements of a crude type, and always worked only on one side, 
with the bulb of percussion always strongly bulging, but evidence of this period 
being quite recent was proved by the finds of a club, made, it is true, of a very 
lasting wood, and bearing unmistakable traces of having been cut into shape by a 
stone implement; of diminutive models of a gun and spade cut out with minute flakes 
and found in a Bushman’s lair; and also of one of these crude stone implements 
fixed by gum to asmall wooden handle, somewhat in the manner of the Australian 
aborigines, and dug out from one of the caves on the coast with the skeleton 
of a Strand-Looper Hottentot, &e. Mention was also made, and examples ex- 
hibited, of the mullers and pounders, scrapers, knives, or arrow-heads found in the 
middens of the coast or its vicinity. 
But on the Cape Flats are occasionally found lance or arrow heads of a very 
superior workmanship, chipped on both sides and tapering at both ends into a point, 
which will bear successful comparison with any of the Dordogne implements of that 
kind. At Vereeniging, in the Transvaal, implements also pointed at both ends 
have been met with, but although they are of a different workmanship, they, like 
those of the Cape Flats, would seem to imply that they belong to a neolithic type, 
having nothing in common with the ‘ Recent Period.’ 
THURSDAY, AUGUST 17. 
The following Papers and Reports were read : — 
1. The Musical Instruments of South Africa. By Henry Barrour, M.A. 
The various musical instruments made and used by the African natives 
inhabiting the region to the south of the 15th parallel of S. latitude, present 
many points of interest, and afford an ample field for careful research. Several 
of the types are of value to the student of the early developmental history of 
musical instruments, as being survivals from the original rudimentary forms, or 
archetypes, whence have arisen by successive improvements a long line of 
descendants, culminating in certain highly specialised forms of modern civilised 
instruments. The bow of the Damaras, which is temporarily converted into a 
musical instrament, may be cited as a survival from the earliest stage in the 
history of a group. In it we may recognise the ancestral form whence may be 
traced through a long and more or less continuous main line of development, 
which embraces the musical bows and their derivatives, the phylogenetic history 
of that series of instruments which, by successive slight modifications, led up to 
the final developments of the harp family. 
Many instruments are interesting not only by reason of the light which, as 
links in the chain of sequence, they throw upon the probable evolution of the 
higher forms from the more rudimentary, but also when studied from the point of 
view of their geographical distribution, whereby conclusions may be arrived at in 
regard to the question of the monogenesis or polygenesis of certain types—as to 
