36 Dr Mitchell on the Manufacture of Gun-Flints. 



this country has undergone must have been 4404 feet (5520 

 1116 = 4404). Admitting that the Alps have experienced the 

 same lowering, Mont Blanc, whose present height is 14,430 

 feet, must have possessed an elevation of 18,834 feet, a height 

 which is not attained by the Nevado de Sorata, the Nevado 

 cTIllimani, Chimborazo, the Dhawalagiri, the Jawahir, and 

 several other peaks of the Himalaya. 



On the Manufacture of Gun-Flints. By JAMES MITCHELL 

 LL. D., F. G. S. Communicated by the Author. 



BRANDON in Suffolk is the only place in England in which 

 gun-flints are now made to any considerable extent. During 

 the war, and before the invention of percussion-caps, when the 

 demand for gun-flints was much greater than it is at present, 

 some were made at Lewisham, Maidstone, Purfleet, Greenhithe 

 and Northfleet ; but none are made there at present, although 

 the largest flint-merchant in the world resides at the last men- 

 tioned place. The gun-flint makers at Brandon say that they 

 have an advantage over every other place in England, in con- 

 sequence of the material which they obtain in the pits below 

 their heath being better than is to be had any where else. 

 They say, that the flints which they are enabled thereby to 

 make will last longer than other flints, and are most certain in 

 their fire. This, from information elsewhere obtained, I consi- 

 der to be true. At Brandon they said that the French no longer 

 made gun-flints, and, in fact, that they themselves were now 

 the only makers in the whole world, and yet the seventy or 

 eighty men now employed could barely make a living by their 

 trade ; the cessation of war, and the invention of percussion- 

 caps, had so much diminished their business. The masses of 

 flint from which the gun-flints are made at Brandon are obtained 

 from a common about a mile south-east from the town. The 

 chalk is within six feet of the surface. The men sink a shaft 

 down about six feet, then proceed about three feet horizontally, 

 and sink another shaft lower down into the chalk about the same 

 depth of six feet, and sometimes they fall in with a floor of flint 

 within this depth. They proceed again about three feet hori- 

 zontally, and sink another shaft six feet ; and so they proceed, 



