In the southernmost part of Africa, in the Cape Colony,[1] and in Natal, stone implements have been discovered which, from their shape, if that alone were sufficient, may be classed as Palæolithic. They are chipped out of various silicious rocks, and are for the most part found upon the surface, though occasionally at considerable depths below it. They have been described by Mr. W. D. Gooch,[2] Mr. W. H. Penning,[3] Mr. J. C. Rickard,[4] and others. Mr. Rickard describes four series from the Junction, Port Elizabeth, East London, and the Diamond Fields. He has presented me with several specimens, mostly in quartz. Mr. E. J. Dunn has given me a remarkably symmetrical ovate implement (6 inches), made of some metamorphic schist, and found under nine feet of stratified beds at Process-fontein, Victoria West, in 1873, and Mr. J. B. Taylor has presented to me ovate implements of quartzite from the valley of the Embabaan, Swaziland.
I have elsewhere,[5] when calling attention to the discoveries of Mr. Seton-Karr in Somaliland, remarked that their great interest consists in the identity in form of the implements with those found in the Pleistocene deposits of North-Western Europe and elsewhere. Any one comparing the implements from such widely separated localities, the one with the other, must feel that if they have not been actually made by the same race of men, there must have been some contact of the closest kind between the races who manufactured implements of such identical forms. Those from Somaliland occur in both flint (much whitened and decomposed by exposure) and in quartzite, but the implements made from the two materials are almost indistinguishable in form. Those of lanceolate shape are most abundant, but the usual ovate and other forms are present in considerable numbers.
Turning westward from Somaliland we meet with flint implements of the same character found by Professor Flinders Petrie at a height of many hundred feet above the valley of the Nile. A few have been discovered in Northern Africa; they recur in the valley of the Manzanares in Spain, in some districts in Central Italy, and abound in the river-valleys of France and England. Turning eastward we encounter implements of analogous forms, one found by M. Chantre in the valley of the Euphrates, and
