406 Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society. 



very remote time (recent quarternary) there were in Algeria artists 

 sufficiently observant and skilled to represent faithfully the animals 

 they then saw, by using stone implements as tools, just as in 

 the grottoes of Aquitaine, prehistoric man engraved on bones, or 

 other material, figures of the reindeer, the aurochs, the bear 

 or the mammoth, so proving his contemporaneity with these 

 animals. 



I may add that the remains of a buffalo of gigantic size, allied to, 

 but differing by the shape of the horns, from the Northern African 

 Buffalo, i'.e., Bubalus baini, have been discovered in South Africa;* 

 and that I found with its remains stone implements which I believe, 

 however, to be of a posterior date. 



Foureau, in his exploration of the Sahara, has met in what he calls 

 Zone X, in the mountains and plateaux of the Northern Touaregs, 

 rock-engravings comparable to those first mentioned by Barth,f and 

 these he describes as follows (p. 1087) : — 



" . . . smooth walls of granite of great height ; these vertical 

 rocks are covered with designs (dessins) of all kinds : men, giraffes, 

 antelopes, (?) J horses, ostriches, bustards, guinea-fowls. These 

 representations have been obtained by means of numerous 

 punchings, not simple lines, but lines formed by a sort of closely- 

 set pointing produced by numerous blows, and giving to the 

 line a certain width. These engravings are covered by numerous 

 inscriptions in Tifinagh and Arabic characters, crossing in all 

 directions ; the line of the latter is finer, and the workmanship 

 is different. . . . On the banks of the Ouad Tidek, rise numerous 

 rounded hillocks (mamelons), natural, not artificial, and con- 

 sisting of large blocks of gneiss or granite with more or less flat 

 surfaces. Most of these blocks are covered with rock-engravings 

 (sculptures rupestres) representing men with large phalli, antelopes 

 with or without horns, giraffes, ostriches, guinea-fowls, &c. In 

 those, as in the ones above mentioned, the outline is produced by 

 a sort of pointing, and they have likewise numerous inscriptions in 

 Tifinagh or Arabic characters engraved across them." 



In one spot, however, the traveller found the representation of an 



antelope, 73 cm. long by 51 cm. high, engraved in simple line, and 



he adds : " Further south (than the mountains where live the 



northern Touaregs) I did not meet with any inscriptions, but I 



know that in the mountainous parts of the Air one comes across 



a fair number of these rock-engravings." 



* Orange River Colony, Basutoland ; Darling, Cape Colony. 

 f ''Documents scientifiques de la Mission Saharienne," par F. Foureau. Paris, 

 1905. 



I The query is mine. 



