280 R. B. Foote — Notes on some recent Neolithic and [No. 3, 



a tolerable mimber were found which were famished with legs, probably 

 three or four in number. In many settlements, I found fragments of 

 flat saucer-like vessels perforated with many holes placed close together. 

 These had evidently constituted strainers of some kind. 



I found several small, rather rudely circular, flat discs of pottery 

 about 2 inches in diameter, the edges of which had been coarsely ground. 

 These were very probably lids to lay upon the mouths of vessels re- 

 quiring to be closed ; such discoid lids are used occasionally now-a-days 

 for the same purpose. 



The pots ornamented with a raised fillet marked with impressions 

 greatly resembling those to be made by a human finger* found in the 

 Yerra Zari Gaffi (Cave) struck the diggers whom I employed as very 

 strikingly different from the pottery made locally at the present time, 

 and they remarked upon this very intelligently. Indeed, the new and 

 strange patterns of the old pottery called forth many more remarks 

 than any of the other finds we made in that quarter. 



In no case did I find any sign of the localities where the potters 

 had followed their trade. These were probably well removed from the 

 settlements (whether the latter stood on the hills or in the plains), near 

 to the rivers, where suitable clays would be likely to be found. 



§. 9. While camped at Halakundi 5 miles south of Bellary along 

 the Bangalore road in December 1884, I obtained some 20 or 30 chipped 

 Palaeolithic implements made of jaspery haematite schist ; they are all 

 of rather small size but of the typical shapes, oval, pointed oval vsdth two 

 or three of the square-edged hatchet-shape so specially characteristic of 

 the south of India. They were collected from the surface of a ploughed 

 field which lies on a great fan or cone of dejection of detritus (chiefly haema- 

 tite and hornblendic schists) formed by one of the numerous torrents 

 coming down from the north-eastern flank of the Sugadevi belta or 

 Copper mountain, the highest part of the band of Dharwar rocks lying 

 south of Bellary. I am unable to offer any further evidence as to their 

 origin at present, but they are in type utterly different from the rudest 

 of the Neolithic implements, and they do not occur intermixed in any 

 place that came under my notice. 



Similar implements occur at distant intervals in the talus fans 

 along the Copper mountain ridge westward. Two good specimens were 



Indians, have not yet been found by me, but they may have been used. I have one 

 piece of thick pottery which might have served in such capacity. It would be most 

 interesting if it were to be established that the old potters of the two continents 

 had both hit on this most ingenious expedient. 



* I am doubtful whether the impressions in question are really those of human 

 fingers, for in none could I detect the impression of the edge of the nail, 



