Dr Mitchell on the Manufacture of Gun-Flints. 37 



going sometimes to the depth of about thirty feet. By making 

 their shafts only about six feet in depth, they are able to descend, 

 and hand up the stone from one stage to another without the 

 aid of any machinery ; and although a windlass, rope, and 

 bucket might save labour, they would require capital, which the 

 poor men who follow this occupation cannot command. They 

 pay a rent of five shillings to the parish for every cart-load, 

 which is as much as three horses can draw, and of this they 

 grievously complain. In the descent of about thirty feet, they 

 generally find three floors of flint, and sometimes as many as 

 four. At every floor of flint which they find they excavate 

 horizontally for several yards, even as far as twenty yards below 

 the chalk. The flint is in large blocks, in form much like the 

 septaria stone. The men break the blocks into moderately-sized 

 pieces, so as to be enabled to hand them up from stage to stage. 

 When engaged in doing this, a man places himself about half- 

 way up between two stages, so as to receive the stone from be- 

 low, and hand it up to the stage above him. They sometimes 

 sink shafts, and do not fall in with flint to repay their labour. 



That the flint of the best quality, and most adapted for the 

 manufacture of gun-flints, is comparatively rare, is shewn by the 

 experience of France as well as England. Dolomieu informs 

 us, that where twenty beds of flint (silex) were found lying one 

 above another, only one or two of these would afford good flint, 

 and very seldom two, generally only one. On the banks of the 

 Cher, he states, that flints were obtained by sinking shafts to 

 the depth of forty or fifty feet, from which horizontal galleries 

 were carried through the only one good stratum which was met 

 with. On the banks of the Seine, in the hills of La Roche 

 Guion, the cliffs present strata of flint (silex), but only one of 

 these, which was six toises from the surface of the chalk, was 

 good material for gun-flint.* 



* I have been informed that the gun-flint makers at Maidstone found only 

 one stratum of flint in the quarries in Kent fit for use. This stratum of flint 

 lies under a stratum of green chalk. It is the only stratum of flint which will 

 not decompose. Fragments which have been fifty years exposed to the air, 

 and are known to have been so long exposed, being flakes struck off" at the 

 time when the old or English manner of making flints was in use, are still as 

 black as ever. The other strata of flint would do to make flints for exporta- 

 tion. This information was given to me by Mr Jeremiah Simrnonds. 



