108 Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society. 



rain. There, for many hundreds of feet, unfinished implements 

 occur in the greatest abundance, the flakes produced in their manu- 

 facture by the thousand, while here and there completed specimens 

 were met with. The quartzite seems to have been of too coarse a 

 grain, as a rule, for suitable working, as nearly all the failures and 

 very few finished implements are in this material, the majority of 

 the good specimens being of greenstone. One or two unfinished 

 examples of chert were also found. 



It is quite clear that these implements must have been made very 

 close to where they are now found. Very probably the gravel is 

 the sweepings of an adjacent land surface where the implements 

 were manufactured on a large scale. Many of them are as sharp 

 and fresh as on the day they were made, while obliteration of 

 the sharpness of the facets in others is more often due to weathering 

 than wear. 



Although the Palaeolithic facies of these implements is unmistak- 

 able, a difference in detail is noticeable when they are compared with 



the typical forms. 



The distinctive implements found in the valley-drifts of the 

 Thames Basin in Britain, which may be taken as typical of the 

 Palaeolithic stage of culture, are divisible into two groups — namely, 

 tongue-shaped and discoidal. 



The tongue-shaped implements, which constitute the majority, are, 

 as their name implies, shaped like a tongue, being as variable in 

 form as that organ. They are chipped completely out of stone 

 (flint), the chipping being done in such a way as to leave a sharp 

 edge along the greater part of the periphery. They are sometimes 

 chipped into delicate, tapering points, and sometimes into thin flat 

 blades, but more generally into a form midway between the two. 

 The edge seldom passes round the thick end, or butt, of the 

 implement. 



The discoidal implements have an oval periphery with the edge 

 continued all the way round. 



Examples of both extremes of the typical tongue-shaped imple- 

 ments are to be noted among the Vereeniging specimens. The 

 great majority, however, are of the same general shape as the 

 average tongue-shaped implement, but differ in that the edge is 

 continued right round the butt. They are thus intermediate between 

 the typical tongue-shaped and discoidal implements, some approach- 

 ing the last mentioned very closely, though none quite. They might 

 be correctly described as almond-shaped. 



Associated with these are a number of implements which, though 

 possessing the characteristic Palaeolithic style and quality of work- 



