168 Origin of Flint. 



friends would have paid less regard to prevailing customs in its burial. 

 This same plate of mica may have previously covered the face of this 

 individual as he lay, it may be, in state. That these remams belonged 

 to a person of distinction, is highly probable. 



We would not be understood as conveying the idea that mica was 

 used by these people for no other purpose than that which we 

 have indicated, or that its presence in mounds can, in any way, always 

 be accounted for. It is sometimes found without any discoverable 

 relation to relics of any kind. That it was used for windows to their 

 houses is quite probable. And were we to suppose that these mound's, 

 some of them, at ^least, were occupied as winter abodes, or as places 

 for storing away provisions, it might justly be inferred that windows 

 of this material were constructed for admitting light. 



Origin of Flint. By C. 8. S. Griffing. 



[Read before the Colurabns Natural History Society, February 27, 1875.1 



In the summer of 1870, in company with your vice-president, Hon. 

 J. H. Klippart, I visited Flint Ridge, in Licking county, and found 

 beds of buhr-stone, a cellular, siliceous, flinty rock, from which, in the 

 early settlement of this State, mill-stones of good quality were 

 manufactured. 



We also found beds of flint, massive, compact silica, very hard and 

 tenaceous, where it had not been exposed above the surface ; but where 

 it had been thus exposed, often readily broken into small fragments 

 with a blow from a hammer. In some places, acres of the surface were 

 covered with broken fragments of flint spawls, where a pre-historie 

 race had evidently manufactured arrowheads. In many places, de- 

 pressions of the surface show where excavations have been made, to 

 reach the unexposed stratum below the friable influence of atmos- 

 pheric action, from which, evidently, the best implements of the stone 

 age found in this vicinity were made. Since the time mentioned, 

 I have repeatedly visited this formation, and learned that there 

 are two layers of flint, that spread nearly or entirely over the Same 

 extent of territory. The first, or lowest, is about one foot in thickness, 

 and above the second seam of coal in our Ohio series ; the second, 

 some two hundred feet higher, and about four feet in thickness, where 

 I have observed it, but it is reported to be much thicker in some 

 other places. In both layers I have found the common carboniferous 



