Chapter X. 



HIS RESEARCHES IN ARCHAEOLOGY. 



It would have been very surprising if a geologist 

 of Brown's standing had not eventually come to 

 take an interest in stone implements. Not that 

 it necessarily follows that a man who can recognize 

 the mineral content of a stone can tell whether it 

 has had its shape altered by human hands. Stone 

 implements were in fact just ordinary natural 

 stones to many generations of geologists, until the 

 French Naturalist, Boucher de Perthes, published 

 a paper in 1846 which gradually convinced the 

 world that they were really the handiwork of 

 prehistoric races of mankind. 



As was to be expected in a country like South 

 Africa, where the prehistoric actually overlaps the 

 historic even up to the present day, stone imple- 

 ments were recognized as such at an even earlier 

 period than they were in Europe. Thus Lieut. W. 

 Peterson in his Narrative of four journeys into the 

 country of Hottentots and Caffraria 9 in the years 

 Mil, 78 and 79, says that when travelling near 

 Kibiskow on the Camdinie River he " found a 

 species of flint (actually chert for there is no flint 



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