﻿158 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



and, liavmg lately read Dr. Hector's paper on " Recent Moa Remains in New 

 Zealand," I venture to believe that my slight experience in the remains of a 

 stone epoch, gathered in another colony (the Cape of Good Hope) may not 

 prove uninteresting to you. 



I may premise that, unlike New Zealand, no native tribe in South Africa 

 has been known to have used stone implements within historical times. In 

 the early days of the colony, Hottentots, or Bushmen, are represented to have 

 used the perforated stones or stone-rings, (of hard sandstone, greenstone, etc.), 

 which are frequently turned up from under the soil, in weighting the ends of 

 sticks with which they dug up roots, but they probably found them to their 

 hand and thus utilized them, many of them being so small as to be useless for 

 such a purpose. As they are found quite independently of the so-called 

 "^arrow-fields," they probably belong to another and later period. Arrow and 

 spear-heads, celts, hammers, saws, chisels, etc., were first found a few years ago 

 by Mr. T. H. Bowker, a well-known colonist at the Cape, and since then have 

 been discovered at various localities, both on the coast and inland. It is 

 remarkable that they are generally found on the surface of the same red clay 

 or gravel, a circumstance which may assist in determining their age. As to 

 that I will hazard no opinion, but at East London the coast line has been 

 submerged and raised again since the implements found there were fashioned. 

 The following extract from a paper by Mr. Mackay, Clerk of Works, in the 

 employment of the Government, (which accompanied a collection of implements 

 that I have seen), may throw some light on this part of the subject. The cal- 

 careous tufa referred to is a recent deposit. On one part of the West Coast, near 

 the mouth of the Orange River, I observed numerous shells of ostrich eggs im- 

 bedded in it. He says, "The red soil in the interior affords no indication of the 

 age of the implements ; but on the coast the red clay can be shown to be overlaid 

 by the calcareous tufa, followed by a wind-stratified sand-limestone, on which rests 

 a yellow plastic clay that is from a rock decomposing at the higher levels, and 

 the resultant clays transported to and filling in the depressions at the lower levels ; 

 then follow gravels, and over them alluvial and sedimentary mud ; then the 

 modern sand-drift." "In 1851 the whole of the ground between East London 

 and Fort Glamoi'gan was covered by drift-sand, with a thick cai-pet of grass 

 grown over it. Waggon traffic cut up the sand in all directions, and in a short 

 time all was blown away except a few hillocks from four to eight feet high. 

 The exposed black clay, formerly protected by the sand, was gradually cut 

 through, and the implements exposed to view. In this condition they were 

 discovered by Mr. T. H. Bowker, in 1867, who had previously discovered them 

 elsewhere. No doubt the implements were made on the spot, for with them 

 were cores and flakes, also their being found in the small islets of black clay 

 that still remain undenuded in the ' arrow field,' and their occurrence in the 



