the same source from which the knowledge of the use of iron was derived. Throughout Africa the mode of fabricating iron was nearly identical; it was the same amongst the Dravidians of Central India, and the Malays. He had traced this corrugated blade upon the little iron spears attached to the axes of the Konds of Central India, and he had an example of nearly the same form on the iron spear of a blow-pipe from Borneo. A nearly similar form (a variety of this form it may be called) was used in the blades of the Circassian daggers, and it was common to the Franks and Anglo-Saxons of Early Europe. Other portions of the spear, such as the spud at the butt end, had nearly as wide a geographical distribution. He believed, therefore, that it was a form derived with the knowledge of metals from the earliest weapons in iron, and retained with that persistency which is characteristic of all barbarous races in the infancy of the arts. He saw no reason to suppose that it was peculiar to Africa, or likely to have originated there from copying the blades of stone. If, however, a considerable number of stone blades of the form exhibited by Sir John Lubbock were found, so as to lead to the supposition that they were intentionally worked in this form for a specific purpose, that would tend materially to alter the speaker's opinion on the subject, and he hoped that Sir John's remark might lead to search being made for them amongst the implements from the Cape,

Mr. EDGAR LAYARD exhibited a collection of stone implements from South Africa, and the following Note was read:

XI.-Note on the STONE IMPLEMENTS of SOUTH AFRICA. By EDGAR L. LAYARD, Esq.

THE specimens which I have the honour to lay on the table of the Ethnological Society this evening, although not representing the whole of the various forms of stone implements found in South Africa, are, nevertheless, some of the very finest of their kind yet discovered. They form a small collection which I have brought to England for my own use; duplicates, equally good and in greater numbers, exist in the South African Museum in Cape Town, in which place also are retained the other implements, to which I shall have occasion to refer in the course of this notice.

It may not be uninteresting to place on record the name of the earliest discoverer of South African stone implements, and the circumstances of their detection. The name of Thomas Holden Bowker, of Tharfield, in the district of Albany, is well known in the colony of the Cape of Good Hope, together with those of his eight stalwart brothers, as one of the most able defenders of his adopted country against the inroads of the Kaffir tribes.

Some ten or twelve years ago, while attending to his more peaceful duties as a member of the Colonial Legislature, he happened to be present while I was unpacking a small consignment of flint implements received from Copenhagen. He was much interested when I showed him those ancient forms, and, to my astonishment declared

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that he had not only picked up scores of similar flakes in the eastern province, but had, moreover, when a boy, actually used them as heads for his own arrows, finding them from their shape peculiarly adapted to his purpose, the usually concave form causing the arrow to spin like a rifle bullet and thus travel with greater accuracy. I should mention that my friend is one of the great rifle shots of South Africa. He did not seem to have known that they were "the works of men's hands," and, on my expressing some doubt as to the identity of the forms, he declared that he still had some remaining, stowed away on a beam in an old barn, which he promised to send to me if the barn had remained undisturbed, and had escaped the ravages and burnings of his foes, the Kaffirs.

Chance, or fortune favoured the further discovery of South African celts! Mr. Bowker's parcel arrived several months afterwards while a chance visitor was present. This lady, the wife of Dr. Dale, the Superintendent-General of Education, was inoculated with my enthusiasm on beholding veritable South African stone implements. Coarse and rude though they were, they were the first that had been discovered in that region of the world, and I showed to my interested listener all the types I could gather from the museum stores.

Again the fickle goddess (Fortune, not my fair friend!) helped the good cause! Mrs. Dale was walking on the "Cape Flats," near her own residence, with a gentleman recently arrived from England. Suddenly he stooped and lifting up a stone from his feet, exclaimed, "Well! if we were not in South Africa, where I know no flint instruments have ever been discovered, I should say I had picked up a stone arrowhead." Mrs. Dale of course, immediately related the incident of the arrival of Mr. Bowker's specimens, which she had witnessed a day or two previously, and a further search revealed that they were walking over what I subsequently ascertained was an ancient manufactory of these stone weapons. Of course, immediate notice was given me of the discovery, and from this, and adjacent spots, most of the finest specimens have been procured.

Such is a succinct account of the first discovery of our South African weapons. I will now proceed to detail the various forms that have been found and of which specimens are mounted on the four cards exhibited.

On the first card we have twenty-one of the most highly wrought specimens yet discovered. Some are of perfect shape, being pointed at both ends and carefully worked on both sides, resembling those exhibited by Sir J. Lubbock (pl. i, figs. 1 and 2), while others are points of similar weapons: some are probably, from their small size, arrow-heads.

On the next card are several heads of a more unfinished kind; some of them are turned so as to show what may be called the "reverse" side, and the "boss," or cleavage lump, so remarkable on all these stone chips. There are also three cores, from which some of the flakes have been chipped. It is curious that, up to the present time, we are ignorant of the locality whence come the stones of which these weapons are formed. Apparently it does not exist in the neighbourhood of the manufactory, for such I consider the place (or places,