The President (Mr. Dennant), in thanking Mr. Pankhurst for his 

 very entertaining paper on a vast and interesting subject, said he did 

 so the more heartily, because it was only ten da>s ago that he waited 

 on Mr. Pankhurst, on his return from Switzerland, and besought him 

 to give them a paper. He was sure, therefore, that the members would 

 show their appreciation of the way in which the request had been 

 responded to by amply discussing the subject of the paper read. He 

 saw several gentlemen present who were fully competent to sustain 

 such a discussion, for the paper really covered a vast area. 



Mr. Henry Willett said he begged personally to express his 

 great satisfaction and to convey his thanks to Mr. Pankhurst for his 

 paper. It only showed how sometimes people might live close 

 together in a large town, and yet not know that they were engaged in 

 congenial pursuits. He had great pleasure in making Mr. Pankhurst's 

 acquaintance, and he hoped and believed that it would ripen into a 

 friendship. It was curious that he (Mr. Willett) had been groping 

 about in a field, hoping to ascertain some facts which might throw- 

 light on the interesting subject of how chalk flints v,-ere deposited, and 

 that whilst he had only been able to get together the specimens, Mr. 

 Pankhurst had, in his laboratory, been enabled to explain many 

 phenomena which to him were mysteries. He was sure that many 

 more discoveries would be made on the subject. He had been induced 

 to take up the special subject of flints from having casually picked up 

 some specimens which seemed to him rather to bear upon a theor>- 

 which, two or three years ago, he should have scouted as an impossi- 

 bility. He did not now say tliat it was a fact, but that it might be so. 

 It was a theory of great interest, and he hoped some members of this 

 Society would not neglect in their walks abroad to pick up the flints 

 they saw, and see if any discover)' could be made which would throw 

 light on the matter. 



The question was this— Were the flints now in process of 

 increasing their size ? He "did not mean to say growing in the 

 sense, that men grew ; but he had rather an idea that there was 

 still going on, in the chalk around them, a process by which the 

 soluble silica disseminated in a mass of chalk,— which varied in 

 relative quantity, he was told, from two to four per cent.,— was gradu- 

 ally being dissolved by rain water, or water charged with carbonic 

 acid, or some other chemical product derived from the chalk in small 



