H.— ANTHROPOLOGY. 155 



It is true that valuable material for the study of Bushman culture — their 

 habits, traditions, legends, &c. — has been collected and is available, thanks 

 to the enlightening researches of William Burchell, Lichtenstein, Baines, 

 Miss Lemue, Campbell, Chapman, Dr. Bleek, Orpen, Stow and others 

 who collected first-hand data, and the work has been ably followed up by 

 Miss Lloyd and Miss Bleek. But information regarding the uses of 

 particular types of stone implements and the technique of their manu- 

 facture is disappointingly meagre, and valuable clues to diagnosis have 

 been denied to us. Even that most striking feature of all, among Bushman 

 relics, the rock-paintings and engravings, some of which are of very recent 

 date, must be studied archseologically, on similar lines to those pursued 

 in the interpretation of the strikingly similar artistic achievements of 

 Aurignacian and Madeleinean Man in France and Spain. How greatly 

 would the interest of this prehistoric art in Europe have been enhanced 

 if only a fuller comprehension of Bushman art had been arrived at by 

 direct observation of its processes and functions. The artists have gone ; 

 this chapter in art-history is now closed, and there can be no period of 

 Renaissance. The modern commentary is appended to the descriptive 

 chapter in the form of suggestive footnotes and appendices, offering 

 tentative interpretations, of which some are extremely plausible and 

 well founded, while others, it must be confessed, are the products of 

 imaginations far more vivid than are the colours and the realism of the 

 actual paintings discussed. 



At the same time, while we must admit that the ethnological record is 

 far weaker than it should be, through lack of scientific observation on the 

 part of those pioneers who had opportunities of detailed study, we can 

 note with great satisfaction the steady growth in South Africa of a keen 

 interest in the archaeological problems with which the country teems. The 

 progressive development of local attention to the study of the Stone-age 

 in South Africa, the increasing desire for the establishment of a time- 

 sequence of culture-phases, coupled with the adoption of more precise 

 scientific procedure in research, are features in the intellectual activity of 

 the region whose progress towards maturity I have myself to some extent 

 been able directly to observe and follow. 



This is my fifth visit to South Africa, and I have thus had opportunity 

 of observing successive episodes in the story of the awakening of 

 enthusiasm in regard to one of the region's most valuable assets — its 

 unlimited wealth in material for the study of prehistory. 



My first visit, in 1899, exactly thirty years ago, revealed to me that, 

 although a definite start had been made and collectors were in the field 

 seeking for relics of the Stone-age, this pastime was restricted to com- 

 paratively few enthusiasts, and the search was of a somewhat desultory 

 nature, conducted without strict method or well-defined perspective 

 outlook. The work had, indeed, been excellently initiated long previously 

 by T. H. Bowker, in 1858, and had been followed up by Dr. Langham Dale, 

 E. L. Layard, and E. J. Dunn, about 1868, by John Sanderson, in 1876, 

 by J. C. Rickard and W. D. Gooch, in 1880, by Major H. W. Feilden, about 

 1881, and by various other pioneers. These had already done much to 

 show how rich was the material, and had suggested correlations with the 

 ancient industries of early prehistoric Europe. 



