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PKESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 1915. 
THE BUSHMAN AS A PALAEOLITHIC MAN. 
By Dk. L. Peringuey. 
Two years ago I endeavoured to give as a subject for my Presidential 
Address a short retrospect of what was known then of the Hthic industry, 
or stone-implement making, in South Africa. I was thereby led to bring 
into the subject the antiquity of the race or races of men who evolved 
these artefacts. It is the study of these relics which has enabled us to 
postulate before he was discovered primitive man, whether ape man, man 
ape, or man as we now understand him. These relics have thus justified 
the whole edifice elaborated on the study of evoluated races of mankind,, 
and they have allowed us to follow his increasing mental development, 
but they have not thrown additional light on the geological or approxi- 
mate age of their early makers — an age which seems, however, to recede 
more and more until we are fronted by the possibility of an ancestor of 
the genus Homo in Tertiary times. 
Since I addressed you — and this is only two years ago — the discovery 
of a palaeolithic human skull and mandible at Piltdown (Sussex) may 
prove to be epoch-making, because it has given us another genus of the 
Hominidae. In Australia, a skull, of considerable interest it is alleged, 
has been brought to light, and there has been found lately in South 
Africa another, unfortunately very incomplete, which is likely to throw an 
additional gleam of light on this very obscure and much-debated subject,, 
the ancestry of the present man. 
In order to bring greater clearness in the handling of my subject, 
which is greatly depending on the hypothesis of evoluated races, I must 
preface my considerations with a short account of these races. 
If we put aside Pithecanthropus, the Ape Man, we have now, as well 
established prehistoric races, the Neandertal Man (Neandertal Spy, La 
Chapelle, les Eyzies, Le Moustier, and perhaps also Gibraltar) ; earlier 
probably than the Neandertal is the Heidelberg Man, known from a 
lower jaw only, but truly an extraordinary relic. This is possibly con- 
