406 Transactions of the Sottth African Philosopkical Society. 



Algerian ones is demonstrated by the fact that man did there execute 

 among others the figure in intagUo of an extinct buffalo, Buhalus 

 d-anti^uns. We had in South Africa, and living at the same time, 

 another buffalo, B. haini, probably larger than the northern one. 

 Its remains have been found in a situation that clearly showed that 

 it had been laid low by man, and its bones fractured for the extrac- 

 tion of marrow, in common with bones of the rhinoceros, large 

 antelopes, &c. l^QumxJ Bubahis haini does not seem to have been 

 etched in South Africa, but its contemporary, Bhinoceros simus, 

 which is said to occur still in parts of Central Africa, is often figured. 

 The South African engravings are, however, on a much more reduced 

 scale than the Northern, and although we have found in both parts 

 of the African continent the stone implements used for the repro- 

 duction of these figures, it is impossible as yet to assign to them 

 an age, and it is doubtful if the conclusions arrived at by the late 

 Sir John Evans or M. M. Boule can be accepted in full." But what 

 can be said with regard to some of the South African implements 

 found is that they are unmistakably of the same type as the palseo- 

 liths found in Lake Karar. 



If we take in South Africa the evidence of the rocks themselves, 

 and they are probably the hardest and most durable of those occurring 

 in the country, we find that the etched parts are in many cases 

 nearly as completely covered by the characteristic thin shining black 

 or brown film found on exposed rock surfaces in the interior of South 

 Africa as the surface of the rock itself. Many, if not most, of the 

 well-executed etchings are strongly patinated, and while a few of 

 less artistic merit are partly coated with that film, the ruder kinds 

 are not coated at all, or are only so in a moderate degree.! 



In the case of the former, and although there is no means of ascer- 

 taining at what rate this film is deposited, there is some justification 

 in assigning to these sculptures a very ancient origin, owing to the 

 presence on the etched part of a patina that can hardly be differen- 

 tiated from the crust forming on the surface of the boulder, &c. Stow, 

 himself an eminent geologist, in order to show the great antiquity of 

 some etchings occurring on an island in the Vaal, opposite Riverton 

 ("The Native Eaces of South Africa," London, 1905, p. 30), says: 

 '* The extreme antiquity of some of these designs is, however, clearly 

 evinced by the fissures which have been formed in the apparently 



* "Etude s.l. station paleolithique du lac Karar," Boule (L'Anthropologie, vol. xi., 

 1900, p. 1); "Palaeolithic Man in Africa," Evans (Pioc. Eoy. Soc. 66, No. 433, 1900). 



t Mr. A. du Toit, of the Cape Geological Survey, informs me that the black 

 shining film is not the result of a simple oxidation as I thought, but of the forma- 

 tion of a very thin film of iron and manganese. 



I 



