PLIGHT LIEUTENANT 



3203 



FLINT 



Flight Lieutenant. In the 

 R.N.A.S., the rank equivalent to 

 that of lieutenant in the R.N. and 

 of captain in the army, and origin- 

 ally confined to pilot officers. In 

 the Royal Air Force the title has 

 been revived for the equivalent 

 rank, but it has been extended 

 to all officers of that rank in that 

 force. See Air Force, Royal ; Naval 

 Air Service, Royal. 



Flight Path. The line which 

 represents the course of an air- 

 craft in flight. See Aeronautics. 



Flinck, GOVAEBT (1615-60). 

 Dutch painter. Born at Cleves, 

 Jan. 25, 1615, he was one of Rem- 

 brandt's most successful pupils. 

 His earlier work, painted under 

 the influence of the master, is of 

 greater value than his later Itali- 

 anate style of court painting. Not- 

 able works are The Annunciation 

 to the Shepherd, Louvre ; The 

 Grey Bearded Man, Vienna; The 

 Expulsion of Hagar, Berlin, painted 

 for the elector of Brandenburg, and 

 The Civic Guard Fete, Amsterdam. 

 He died at Amsterdam, Feb. 2, 1660. 



Flinders. River of Queens- 

 land, Australia. It issues from 

 the N. extremity of Lake Neelia 

 in Rupert co., and flows a generally 

 N.W. course of about 220 m. to 

 discharge into the Gulf of Car- 

 pentaria, 10 m. S. W. of Kimberley. 

 It was named after Matthew 

 Flinders (1760-1814), the navi- 

 gator and hydrographer, who sur- 

 veyed the coast of Australia. 



Flinders, MATTHEW (1774- 

 1814). British sailor. Born March 

 16, 1774, the son of a surgeon, in 

 1790 he went 

 to transplant 

 bread-fruit 

 trees from the 

 South Sea 

 Islands to the 

 W. Indies. Re- 

 turning in 1793, 

 he was posted 

 to the Bellero- 

 phon, saw 

 action on the " i 

 Glorious First Fr 

 of June (1794), and sailed hi the 

 Reliance to New South Wales, 

 where he began a series of ex- 

 plorations lasting until 1799, cir- 

 cumnavigating Tasmania, which 

 was hitherto supposed to be part 

 of the mainland. 



In 1800 Flinders was appointed 

 to the Investigator, and again 

 sailed (1801) for Australia, where 

 he charted the Gulf of Carpentaria, 

 and surveyed the coast of New 

 Holland. On his voyage home, un- 

 aware that Britain and France were 

 at war, he was detained by the 

 French at Mauritius, and im- 

 prisoned, 1803. In June, 1810, he 

 was released and made his way to 



England, where he wrote an ac- 

 count of his discoveries. He died 

 July 19, 1814. 



Flindersia. Small genus of 

 evergreen trees of the natural order 

 Meliaceae. Natives of Australasia 

 and the Moluccas, they have hard, 

 close-grained wood of a yellow 

 tint, useful for many purposes. 

 F. australis (Crow's Ash), found in 

 Queensland and New South Wales, 

 grows to a height of 60 ft., with 

 smooth, flaking bark, and alter- 

 nate leaves broken into three to 

 six oblong leaflets. The numerous 

 small white flowers are in dense 

 clusters. The wood is very durable. 

 The trees are named after Matthew 

 Flinders (q.v.). 



Flint. Crystalline mineral com- 

 posed mainly of silica ; a variety 

 of chalcedony. It is compact, 

 almost opaque, usually dark grey 

 or brown, somewhat harder than 

 steel, and breaks 

 with a shell-like 

 fracture, forming 

 sharp -cutting 

 edges. When first 

 unearthed it is 

 brittle, becoming | 

 toughened by ex- HHHH|HH 

 posure. Chert and I 

 hornstone are ^^^H 

 coarser forms. 



In Great Britain Flmt Wales " 

 and W. Europe flint occurs mainly 

 in the middle and upper chalk 

 formations, where it forms irregu- 

 lar nodules, tabular masses, and 

 veins. It is also scattered 

 through tertiary gravels and 

 alluvial soils, sometimes in great 

 numbers, derived from disin- 

 tegrated chalk rock. The nodules, 

 sometimes several feet across, are 

 often the silicified remains of 

 sponges, or are hollow shells formed 

 by the concretion of gelatinous 

 silica around urchins, sponges, and 

 other marine organisms. When 

 this dense, non-crystalline con- 

 stituent, the cause of black flint, 

 is removed, white flint results. 

 The veins were deposited in joints 

 and fissures in chalk rock, car- 

 bonate of lime being displaced by 

 dissolved silica of organic origin. 



The cutting edge produced by 

 flaking enabled palaeolithic man to 

 invent edged tools, prior to the in- 

 troduction of metallurgy. Utilis- 

 ing at first water -worn pebbles or 

 cliff-exposed nodules, this industry 

 led to flint-mining. The discovery 

 that sparks are produced when 

 flint is struck with iron pyrites 

 brought about the percussive 

 method of fire-making. In medie- 

 val E. Anglia flint was largely used 

 in church-building, walls being 

 made of undressed or split flints, 

 and porches and battlements 

 panelled with squared flints, some- 



times in beautiful colour zones. As 

 road metal it is unsatisfactory be- 

 cause of its readiness to pulverise. 

 This quality is utilised for pottery 

 and optical or flint-glass. A snow- 

 white quartz powder is obtained 

 by heating flints and throwing 

 them into cold water. In France 

 they are crushed 

 between chert 

 blocks and ex- 

 ported to Great 

 Britain and 

 America. In Es- 

 sex and the home 

 counties S. of the 

 Flint arms Thames there is 

 a normal annual output of 30,000 

 tons, and a similar output in Bel- 

 gium. See Chalk; Flint Implements. 

 Flint. Mun. bor., formerly the 

 county town of Flintshire, Wales. 

 It stands on the S. shore of the 

 Dee estuary, 12m. N.W. of Chester 



Ruins of the castle built by Edward I 



on the L. & N.W.R. In earlier 

 times an important harbour, the 

 accumulation of sand in the estuary 

 now keeps the tidal waters away 

 from the town. Hundreds of acres 

 of marshland in the estuary could 

 be profitably reclaimed. Artificial 

 silk is made here. There are alkali 

 and copper works, and lead and 

 coal mines in the neighbourhood. 

 The castle, built by Edward I, was 

 the scene of the meeting between 

 Richard II and Bolingbroke, de- 

 scribed by Shakespeare, and was 

 twice captured by the Parliament- 

 arians and dismantled in 1647. It 

 was taken over by the office of 

 works in 1920. Market day, Sat. 

 Pop. (1921) 6,302. 



Hint. City of Michigan, U.S.A., 

 the co. seat of Genesee co. It 

 stands on Flint river, 70 m. by rly. 

 N. by W. of Detroit, and is served 

 by the Grand Trunk Western and 

 the Pere Marquette rlys. It con- 

 tains a Federal building, a state 

 asylum for the deaf and dumb, a 

 city hall, a high school, and a 

 puttie library. It is a centre for 

 the manufacture of motor- vehicles, 

 wagons, and carriages, and has wool- 

 len, flour, cigar, and lumber indus- 

 tries. Settled in 1820, it received a 

 city charter in 1855. Pop. 70,100. 



Flint. River of Georgia, U.S.A. 

 Rising in the N. part of the state, 

 it flows 350 m. generally S.W. to 

 unite with the Chattahoochee in 



