Note on a Fire-Flint of Strandlooper Origin. 
51 
hardly sufficient to afford firm attachment to the stone, however it be used ; 
in its present condition the stone is imperfectly mounted. 
The mounting of small chips of quartz or other hard stones in resin 
or gum-cement seems to have been a practice of Bushmen, and there are 
several specimens of stone- tipped arrows thus prepared in the South African 
Museum. Iron, again, has been known to all the South African tribes for 
centuries, although as a comparative rarity to the Hottentots and Bushmen ; 
its scarcity may perhaps explain the very late adoption of the flint and steel 
amongst the South African tribes as a whole. 
Tinder would have to be used in conjunction with such an implement, 
but this was no novelty to the aborigines, and indeed is constantly used by 
the Kalahari Bushmen of the present day along with their fire-sticks. It is 
true that owing to the brittle nature of the resin a moderate blow on steel 
would weaken the attachment, and for use in this way the implement would 
be quite impracticable. To produce fire there is no need to strike a blow : 
it is sufficient to draw the steel rapidly over the edge of the flint, the latter 
and its mount of resin being held firmly in the hand. 
It may be urged that an easier and more direct way of producing fire 
was well known to the aborigines, and that Bushmen produce lire by means 
of fire-sticks with astonishing rapidity. Nevertheless, fire-sticks have their 
limitations, and in the dreary wet seasons of the Southern Cape Coast the 
flint and steel may be more reliable. This is indeed just the kind of 
implement that the coastal cave-dwelling people might be expected to evolve. 
Moreover, Dr. Peringuey has actually received from the Coldstream Cave 
what appears to be the steel striker of a tinder-box, and this same cave 
contained Strandlooper remains. 
It is also suggested that the tortoise shells found by Mr. Dumbleton 
along with the implement were improvised tinder-boxes. 
According to the original report, three such shells accompanied the 
skeleton, but there were no records of tortoise shells from other Strandlooper 
burial places. In prosecuting his researches, Dr. Peringuey obtained very 
detailed records of circumstances and accessories from a number of burial 
sites ; indeed, one of his investigators was specially asked to search for 
more examples of the above-mentioned stone implement and for tortoise 
shells, but failed to find either, though beads and sundry other objects were 
taken. Therefore the association of tortoise shells with this unique type of 
stone implement is probably not accidental. But on this point I do not 
lay great stress, for at the present day tortoise shells are much used by 
natives throughout the sub-continent, and for a variety of purposes ; they 
are included amongst the numerous items in the outfit of a Kaffir witch- 
doctor, and are commonly used by Bush women in Kalahari as powder 
boxes. 
Another specimen of essentially the same type, though differing greatly 
