286 The Twenty -'Ninth General Meeting. 



layers also in the hard chalk — the well-known rubble stone of the 

 downs — may throw some further light on it. It appears to be 

 incompletely-formed flint, and needs investigation. 



I have now concluded my task : one, I fear, not entirely congenial 

 with the interests and the lines of thought that belong to archaeology. 

 But one thing at least I may ask you to recognise, while apologising 

 for so dreary a discourse, and that is the continuity of historical 

 sequence in the long roll of time of which, through at least the later 

 ages of our venerable world, the subject of my discourse, flint, has 

 been a constant, and, I hope you will allow, a not un-eloquent 

 witness. 



The Rev. Canon Jackson proposed a vote of thanks to the 

 President for the able address he had delivered. Mr. Maskelyne 

 had (he said) shown by the ability and the masterly knowledge of 

 the subject, which the address displayed, that he was well qualified 

 to take the chair not only in their little county society, but in a 

 society of natural philosophers, who were much further advanced 

 in that subject than the Wiltshire Archaeological Society could 

 pretend to be. Their's was an archaeological society, it was true, but 

 while they simply pretended to explain the history of a Church, castle, 

 or any other building, Mr. Maskelyne could tell them the history of 

 the very stones of which those buildings were constructed. That was 

 what he (Canon Jackson) called an archaeologist of archaeologists. 

 Mr. Maskelyne was the author of a most valuable paper which had 

 appeared in the Wiltshire Archaological Magazine, containing the 

 history and an analysis of the substances of which the different 

 stones of Stonehenge are formed, and he (Canon Jackson) sincerely 

 hoped he would allow them to add to the Magazine the address he 

 had just delivered. They should then be able to hand down to 

 posterity the history not only of the stones of Stonehenge, but also 

 of the chalk and flint with which they were so familiar. 



Mr. F. W. Buxton, M.P., in seconding it, said he hardly knew 

 why he had been called on for this most pleasant duty, but it might 

 be that being outside their world he could show that they were 

 united with the elect in returning thanks to him for his paper. He 

 was sure as one of the laymen, and one of the uneducated laymen. 



