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Brief Abstracts of the Eeports of the Scientific 

 Meetings in 1877. 



November 23, 1876. 



A special meeting was held on Tlmrsdaj', Nov. 23. The 

 President, Q-. Dowker, Esq., F.G.S., gave a lecture on Flint 

 Stones, "with an account of Banded Flints. The lecture was 

 illustrated by diagrams, and also by a large number of speci- 

 mens from the President's private collection. Colonel Horsley 

 occupied the chair, and there was a large attendance of members 

 and visitors. 



Mr. Dowker commenced by alluding to the common preval- 

 ence of flints, especially in this part of England. The roads 

 were made of them, the fields strewn with them, and the shore 

 covered by them. 'Iheir various forms, and the impressions 

 often on them, would furnish thoughts and sj)eculations to' the 

 most casual obsei-ver, none perhaps more frequent than that 

 relating to their origin and natiu-e. Though many theories on 

 their casual origin had been started and abandoned, the subject 

 still was an unsettled one. Locally, aU. were derived from the 

 chalk where flint would be found in scattered nodules, or with 

 the nodides arranged in horizontally extended layers placed one 

 above the other at regular distances, or sometimes in compact 

 continuous layers, tahuhr fiint, and lastly as thin veins or layers 

 passing obliquely or perpendicularly across the plane of the 

 bedding of the chalk. 



He then reviewed the various theories of the origin of flint. 





