° 18 
But these smaller scattered specimens that we find in every field- 
we cannot help asking how came they there, and when? In the 
face of the cliffs reaching from Dover onward we may find an 
answer to the latter question. There we see them in long, unend- 
’ ing, parallel lines, one above the other at varying intervals, stretch- 
ing away into the distance; all who have lived in, or visited chalk 
districts have learned to associate chalk and flint. Yet it would be 
incorrect to assume that flint is limited to that rock ; it is found in 
many others though far more sparingly. But undoubtedly all the 
-flints in-Kent and the adjoining counties have once belonged to 
beds of chalk. In the fields they greatly annoy the farmer; in 
spite of all his diligence in periodically clearing the ground of them, 
they seem to be as numerous as ever, giving some apparent ground 
for the belief prevalent in some parts of England that they grow 
there and we cannot extirpate them. When we ask how they came 
among the soil of our fields the geologist tells us they were left 
behind when the chalk beds wasted away, for it is part of their 
ereed—and a credible part of it in all senses, that beds of chalk 
once stretched all over the Weald of Kent, but that the rain, rivers, 
and frost of long ages have washed it back to our present line of 
hills. The flints, bemg of more unyielding material, remained 
behind as permanent witnesses of the great change, 
And there are puzzling questions too about these long flint lines 
in the cliff. By what strange natural laws and processes came they 
there? For we know that these lines are but the edges of vast 
sheets of flints underlying the chalk and covering probably an area 
of many square miles. Beds of sand, we can readily understand, 
were deposited in the waters; the white chalk consists we are told 
of microscopic shells which gradually subsided to the bottom of the 
_ ocean as the occupants died, and there accumulated age after age: 
_ but flint in its multiplied forms, strange and often grotesque—how 
came it to alternate with this spotless limestone, not being lime- 
stone itself? Is it also organic? Or is it a sediment? If the 
_ latter how came it in such uncouth shapes ? 
__ And yet perhaps, when we come to examine it, not altogether so 
_ uncouth; we have some shapely forms before us, and a very little 
consideration inclines us to the belief in an organic origin. 
_ Undoubtedly some of those specimens on the table are petrified 
sponges, shells, and other animal formations. 
Now, if we appeal to the chemist for aid in our study of flint, we 
_ are told at once in learned language that it consists almost wholly 
_ Of “silica,” which is a combination of oxygen with the element 
- silicon. This silica in a thousand forms enters very largely into 
_ the composition of the earth’s crust; there are few rocks which do 
p not contain it.. In combination with water it forms silicic acid 
